Hacker News Reader

Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

I understand the massive difference between these and a mechanical watch, but I just cannot see myself ever using a digital watch. Ever... not even one these new super cool Garmin ones or even an Apple watch, I almost put them all in the same bag, including these Casio legendary watches.

There is something so beautiful about a mechanical watch... I am not even talking hyper expensive stuff, there's always Seiko, Citizen, Rotary and hundreds more... so its not a flex, its just an understanding of having to look at the time and not seeing a nasty digital number. Maybe its because i work looking at screens all day.

View on HN

What you're describing is how the watch market bifurcated after quartz watches came out. Mechanical watches were previously utilitarian devices, made to be as thin as possible and sold at a premium because they were the most accurate timekeeping devices that could be possibly made at that size. If you had a large watch, it meant it was cheap. After quartz watches came out, mechanical watches could no longer compete on size, accuracy, or features, so they took their current role of being personal accessories for men, a sort of socially acceptable jewelry. They got larger and flashier because the point of the watch became personal expression (or social signalling at the high end) rather than simply telling the time.

You can see that digital watches are superior by every non-aesthetic measure. Reliability, resistance to mechanical shock, timekeeping (You had one job!) , life before "charges", size, weight, life without maintenance etc. I found a digital watch I hadn't touched in ten years, and it was still running, and still close to the real time.

I wear a mechanical watch (Bremont F15 watch) as a kind of fancy-dress jewelery. It's a fashion / social thing. As a tool, it does not compare favorably.

If I'm digging up the garden or changing the tyres on my car, I'm going to want my G-Shock. Quartz, solar powered, radio synchronized, and basically indestructible. After WW3 it's going to be just cockroaches wearing G-Shocks.

Good point. I have recommended G-Shocks in the past, to people that, like yourself, like to be out there and do stuff... it is most definitely about lifestyle too. I dont garden and I dont really go out for long walks a la Into the Wild... so a mechanical is just fine to tell me its about time to fuck off from the office, but I get that its just not going to cut it if in the middle of nowhere running from bears.

I’ve owned a few mechs and eventually sold all of them. Too fiddly, hated worrying about the accuracy.

True. It can be a pain in ass, but it can also be part of the allure... plus, you do also have non-mechanic analog beauties like some of these Citizens that come with the craziest thing, they automatically set the time based on radio towers in the northern hemisphere, i mean who the fuck thinks about stuff that? And they charge with light, not the sun, light... forgot the name of the technology... then you have the Bulova Super Seville that also has a super interesting quartz mechanism, keeps the heartbeat of the watch operating at a rate that makes the seconds hand move as if it was a mechanical watch,and battery last a decade or something... those also super interesting watches...

I don't understand the allure of something that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

Time keeping is a solved problem. Why would anyone spend varying shades of fortune on something that is functionally inferior, but explicitly labels itself a "superlative chronometer"?

I have a quartz-powered mechanical, with deep water proofing, radio sync and solar power, and sapphire glass. I don't have to worry about charge/battery, or scratches, or any water, and it's always 100 accurate. I will literally never have to think about those things, which is why I like it.

Yes, This is precisely what I'm using now.

I have a digital Casio with an analog display. It's solar, so it never needs to be charged. It sets itself to the correct time, and date, across DST and timezone changes.

It doesn't have the mechanical beauty of an automatic with a perpetual calendar, but is otherwise better in every way that matters, and it is just as pretty.

Even Casio started recently to produce mechanical watches, and for their prices they srent bad at all, love the design lf the efk-11

Reply on news.ycombinator.com