Mechanical Watch (2022)

I have been torn between wearing mechanical watches and smart watches. I don't need/want/like notifications on my wrist, but I really enjoy the activity and heart rate tracking of the Apple Watch.

I have been reluctantly wearing a Samsung Withings watch that looks mechanical but is actually smart, but a mediocre compromise (you need to wear it higher up the wrist than I usually do, and I don't believe it gives accurate heart rate and activity measurements). 30 day battery life is pretty cool though.

I may just start going back to my Vostok and Seiko watches full time at this point. (I don't like spending a lot of money on watches, anyone who is curious on getting into them should check out both brands as economical starters - the Vostok Amphibia has a storied history!)

For me it's the opposite. Notifications and payments are my main benefit. I would never wear a watch that shows only the time (hence I never wore one since the late 90s until mid 2010s). Sleep tracking with SpO2 is a big thing for me too though.

I think mechanical watches are much more about being jewellery than function, even though it's impressive engineering. But I'm not a very flashy guy (I don't even own any shirts that fit anymore, just T-shirts lol) so I don't really care.

But it's good to see everyone can get what they like. I'm personally really happy with how far smartwatches have come.

I'd like a watch that does two things:

- Shows the time (and possibly date)

- Vibrates when I get a call (or maybe other notifications)

Other than that I'd like it to be small and have a long battery life. Is there anything like this?

I currently use a Garmin smartband, but there are so many features I don't use.

Yes I've seen that kind of watch too. I forget which brand it was but it was one of the mechanical brands.

For what it's worth, the amazfit and Xiaomi products also have very great battery life (around 2 weeks) and some are very light. With the gadgetbridge or notify for Android apps they're really privacy conscious too.

I think Fitbit Inspire would do the job. Loved that multi-day battery life too.

Maybe the basic (and old) Fitbit Charge? It has a pedometer, time, and vibrating alarm.

Is there any reason you don't just disable notifications? That's what I've done on my Apple watch and I've loved it.

I disabled all but the most important notifications (calls, texts primarily) and it's been great. I no longer have to drag my phone out of my pocket when someone calls me, and all unnecessary notifications can wait until I'm bored.

Consider something like a Whoop or Oura Ring which monitors health metrics but doesn’t rely on a watch? That’s what I’ve settled on so that I have the best of both worlds.

Those are subscription based though.

I was wearing a MiBand and getting ready to get a Apple Watch. Then my wife got me a Longines auto. I'll never go back to smartwatches again.

I'm not a collector when it comes to watches, and I can happily wear that Longines until the end of time, and will be happy.

Having a tactile watch with real hardware with no electricity inside brings me more joy than some capable electronic toy which needs constant tending and replacement.

If I was climbing mountains, maybe but mere outdoor activities I have a ProTrek. More than enough.

In a similar story, my wife gave me an Omega calibre 1861 Moonwatch years ago, and I nearly always wear it. But a few years ago, I got an Apple Watch for running, and now I often wear both, because I like the heart monitor, the haptic hints while driving, and don't always have my phone along. I wish the Apple Watch had a face that didn't have a time display.

Try Garmin Instinct? It's a digital watch (not analog) and more of a fitness tracker than a smart watch. You can disable any notifications you don't want.

That's where I ended up. My Instinct has replaced my mechanical watches for every occasion except for the most formal. The app is decent, the metrics are awesome, and the accessories work without fuss (I pair mine with the Heart Rate strap when doing kettlebell stuff). I love my other watches and still have one or two I will eventually convince myself to buy, but the Garmin Instinct 2 has been on my wrist for 90% of the last year.

Personal and subjective opinion ahead.

Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.

Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.

Easy choice if you ask me.

Mechanical watches these days are primarily about aesthetics. Although I must say that I find myself reaching less and less for my mobile these days to find out the time because I wear a mechanical watch.

A smartwatch is about data, primarily.

You can have both. Use the mechanical watch for occasions that require a formal attire and use the smartwatch as your daily driver and sport companion.

I wear a smart watch at the gym to track my heart rate, but when not at the gym I wear a mechanical watch (or some other normal watch... I recently got a Casio World Time I have love way more than I probably should).

I had an Apple Watch, but sold it, as I felt guilty not wearing it more, with all that it can do. I ended up getting the cheapest Polar watch option, that does everything on-device (I don't have an account or anything), and can wear that to the gym if I just want to check out my heart rate.

I had both a Pebble v1 and a Pebble v2 and loved them both. Pebble went defunct though, so I switched back to a Seiko 5 automatic dive watch once I found I didn't really care for any of the other available smart watches at the time.

There's something beautiful to me about a mechanical watch being tied to my personal relativity. Compared to an NTP synchronized smart watch, nothing should update the time on my watch but me. The actual usefulness of this feature is merely philosophical but it makes me happy to consider.

The only thing I miss is weather at a glance on my Pebble. I used a watch face with the temperature on it and to this day I still look at my wrist when I'm thinking about the temperature lol

I have a Pixel Watch and I must say, I enjoy the sweeping second hand.

For me it was an easy choice. First, I was starting to worry about heart health. Second, my mechanical watches could be sold for more than I paid for them.

This blog is what got me into the fabulous hobby of watch repairing. Well, this blog and Marshall's awesome repair videos over at Wristwatch Revival: https://www.youtube.com/@WristwatchRevival

Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.

Guns, small engines, and 3D printers are its larger modern cousins.

3D printers have very little mechanical complexity. It's all in the software.

If it wasn't for the computing power/software complexity required, hobbyist 3D printers could probably have been a thing in the 70s or 80s

They’re not complex, just easily taken apart and meant to be repaired by humans. The software isn’t particularly complex either, the reason for their surge recently was due to patents expiring for additive manufacturing. https://futurism.com/expiring-patents-set-to-improve-3d-worl...

Yeah, I suppose the software to control the printer is the relatively straightforward bit, the complex part is the software that slices the model and converts it into an efficient set of G-code commands for the printer. (That and the software used to create 3D models to begin with...)

That isn’t complex either. There was no reason besides patents that 3D printing could have been a reality decades ago. Simple math is all you need and gcode isn’t just 3D printing it’s also for CNC, something that was able to be done around that time.

These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.

A mechanical film camera (say, a Leica) is similar. They are also meant to be opened, cleaned up, lubed, etc...

Espresso machines, as well, and vintage stereo equipment. I have really come to appreciate the zen of user-serviceable physical stuff.

I can relate - i took repairing espresso machines as a hobby since the pandemic. The parts are not complex at all and even 60+ years old E61-machines can be serviced easily (apart from not so cool stuff like asbestos as boiler insulation, leaded solder for boiler + fittings and mercury pressure switches).

But even todays machines (depending on manufacturer and origin) are very serviceable. Especially italian made ones.

For sure I have a La Pavoni and I can get parts lists, diagrams, and everything else I need to rebuild the whole thing if I needed to. https://www.lapavoni.com/en/technical-documentation

Pocket knives! Nice modern pocket knives should be disassembled and maintained regularly.

I have a Kershaw Leek, which while it isn't particularly expensive, is easily on the "cost exceeds direct utility" side of things, is easy to take apart, and I can't imagine what I would regularly take it apart for.

A co-worker keeps a blog of his watch restorations. I have no interest in the hobby, but I do have an interest in viewing the work of someone that does. Of particular interest to me is that what he restores isn't high-end stuff, but common watches that might have one particular bit of history that makes them interesting. Radium dials, for example.

https://www.westcoasttime.net

That is a great channel. It's definitely made me consider getting into that hobby. Seems very relaxing.

'1337 watch-repairing skillz qualify you to work on nukes: https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-warheads-military-bomb-pl...

   There are thousands of tiny parts inside each warhead, 
   so steady hands are key. That’s why technicians go 
   through a skills assessment that includes disassembling 
   and assembling a mechanical wristwatch.

This post is what got me into mechanical watches as I've always wondered how the analogue clocks/watches work but couldn't bother myself to actually read upon it. But after the article, I even got myself a clean Seiko 5 automatic, not because I wanted a fancy watch, but I wanted to own a piece of mechanical wonder.

Grand Seikos are some of the best mechanical watches. Their quartz line is also exceptional. Very underrated and much prefer them over overpriced Rolex.

The Spring Drive movement is amazing, very accurate, very high quality and that smooth sweeping seconds hand is mesmerizing. Availability is good, and the price is a lot better than the high-end Swiss brands.

Rolex these days is a joke, even the authorized dealers will rip you off shamelessly. They will either refuse to sell you a watch they have in store, or they will force you to buy 30 grand in extra jewelry just to get the Rolex you want.

Since it has electrical components, I think Spring Drive isn't a mechanical movement.

It's a mechanical movement regulated by quartz. In a traditional mechanical movement, the escapement prevents the main spring from unwinding all at once. It is done with a fork which ticks at a certain rate governed by the balance wheel. In a Spring Drive movement, the escapement is replaced with an electromagnetic "brake" governed by a quartz crystal. So it still has many of the characteristics of a mechanical watch: it's still powered entirely by a main spring which can be wound or automatically wound by your body movements, it needs regular maintenance like other mechanical watches, and it isn't as durable as most quartz-only watches.

That's true but it's still driven by a spring and mainly mechanical. I understand people who don't like it, but I also see it as a reasonable tradeoff and find them just as fascinating as purely mechanical models. In the end people wear them for the same reasons.

Many Rolex models seem expensive, but they are easy to sell and you will get much of your money back or even turn a profit.

I agree with you. I used to stock up gold Rolexes as investment but sold them when their value peaked during the pandemic. For collection purposes? Rolexes are duds.

Never was interested in Rolexes, too flashy for my taste. Seikos are sporty, can match with everything and does not want to show off to everyone

I feel like most watch folks have at least 1 Seiko in their watch case at least once in their collecting journey. Fantastic watches, enjoy!

Seiko fan here. Seconded.

I have a relatively inexpensive Seiko 5 mechanical watch that I really like, but as much as I love the idea of mechanical watches I simply don't have the patience to tend to it. Accuracy is a big problem (at least with my specific watch). Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it) it's running a few minutes slow per day, meaning I needed to remember to adjust it every morning and always had to assume there's at least a minute or two margin of error one way or the other any time I read it--almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.

For a while I wore a solar-powered Casio that self-adjusted every morning using the NIST atomic clock radio signals, and the peace of mind knowing that my watch was always accurate was such a pleasure in comparison. It was kind of cheap build quality and eventually fell apart, but I don't think I'll ever go back to a mechanical watch again after that.

Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it)

Wow, that's bad. Do you know what is magnetizing it? A cheap Seiko 5 should be able to keep time within a few seconds a day. Minutes a day means it is broken. It isn't a just tuning issue, there is something else going on.

Yes, it sounds a degaussing and calibration. My simple Seiko 5 with 7S36C is within +/- 4 seconds per day, and I never adjust it except short-month skipping.

I'm the same. I had several Seiko 5 watches in the past and even modded one of them with a hacking mechanism. I would monitor the accuracy every week with a timegrapher app on the phone and try to make small adjustments.

The convenience of having a modern Bluetooth-syncing cheap Xiaomi fitess watch is so great I don't believe I'll ever go back.

I also got really into learning about watches and watching a watch repair stream on twitch (in 2020), and I even pulled out my great-grandfather's pocket watch from the 1890s and got it serviced/repaired (or at least running again for a while but now it won't run again; I suspect the person I took it to didn't do a great job).

When it came to buying a watch for myself I also ended up also getting a solar powered Casio with NIST synchronization ("Waveceptor"), the type with hands (for the looks). I love the idea that it's technology without software updates or battery changes (hmm, does the battery you charge with solar wear out?), and always keeps perfect time to the second without any effort on my part. This one (price seems a lot higher than before): https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.WVA-M640D-1A/

Somehow, watching all those meticulous adjustments to make sure the mechanical watches kept good time made me prioritize that to the point I didn't even get a mechanical watch.

Accuracy can vary a lot even within one price segment. My Seiko 5 was pretty inaccurate too, while my current watch cost 30 bucks more and has less than 3 seconds deviation per day. So I set the time once every 1-2 months and that's perfectly fine for me. But it's definitely not the most practical tech.

almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.

Maybe it's just me but I don't need perfect accuracy on a wristwatch. If one minute more or less matters I'm already too late anyway.

I've been a long time admirer of the interactive animations on this site.

What tool/library would you pick to create similar ones yourself?

Looking at the source [1], the author seems to hand-craft them using the canvas API, but man, that seems really difficult!

[1] https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js

Bartosz does an amazing job of making custom interactives and animations to support his articles. It looks like he uses custom canvas with webgl for the 3d renders.

There are 3d engines in JavaScript like three.js (https://threejs.org/) that can abstract some of the 3d rendering work for you.

I agree with naet that threejs might be the thing to look at if you want to make 3d animations. My own interactive diagrams are 2d, and I often use svg with reactive data filling in the parameters. [1] I've also tried hand crafting and it's not so bad for pages like this. They're mostly write-once pages, not software that's being maintained for many years. Some of our intuitions are out of whack when they tell us that we need abstractions and frameworks for maintainability.

[1] https://www.redblobgames.com/making-of/circle-drawing/

I was hoping this is based on an open source physics engine, but apparently it's all handcrafted.

My favorite watch ever was a self-winding mechanical Swatch. I suspect they (Swatch) acquired the company that made it. Disappointingly, when the pins that held the band on started to slip, there was no good way to repair it.

I've since switched to a smart watch, but I keep getting tempted to go back. I generally use my smart watch as a very gentle alarm, and for fitness tracking. I just don't want to be the geek who wears two watches. Maybe I should only wear it at night?

A self-winding watch needs to be worn for hours each day to not run out of power. A manual-wind watch will be a better choice for a night-only mechanical watch.

You can get a watch winder to keep your automatic wound even if you don't wear it all the time.

Incredible as usual. Like a visit to a science museum. Wikipedia should commission this guy to explain all the things in this intuitive, interactive, visual way.

He's not taking commissions, although maybe he'd make an exception for wikipedia.

Do you know where he says he's not taking commissions? Just curious bc I wonder who is trying to commission this kind of stuff, and what his reason is for not doing it.

This was the most engrossing article I’ve read in a while.

Check the whole blog, the amount and detail of JS animations on all the different topics is awesome.

Holy shit this might be the most functional, clearest website I've ever used.

I always wondered what all those bits and bobs inside as mechanical watch are.

You should check out their other articles. I've previously read the Bicycles one and the GPS one, both great. https://ciechanow.ski/archives/

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533 on May 4, 2022, 413 comments

Other topics are gears, floating point, naval architecture, cameras & lenses, and GPS:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ciechanow.ski

There are semi-electric versions of mechanical watches based on "tuning fork" movements. They are cheap and accurate, and are a stepping stone between mechanical and quartz from the 60s/70s

I don't have the skills or machinery to make a wristwatch sized version, but I did make a _big_ sized version: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c...

For a clock, could a worm drive provide the necessary reduction without the microscopic teeth? Tamiya sells small drives with a 150:1 reduction ratio.

It's almost about time that Bartosz releases his next illustration, excited!

Hugely popular original posting of this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31261533

Hard to beat this for explaining how a mechanical watch really works

Same fantastic format, different topics:

- bicycle: https://ciechanow.ski/bicycle/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35343495

- sound: https://ciechanow.ski/sound/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33249215

Fantastic animations!

Fanstastic animations!

This reminds me of Dave Sobel's book Longitude, which tells a fascinating story on how John Harrison created the first reliable marine clock. Such stories humble me and make me deeply appreciate the ingenuity of mankind to conquer the seemingly impossible challenges to build the civilization we enjoy today.

A beautifully made web-page, fitting for a watchmaker. Lovely animations. I'm impressed!

Nice to see this again. Such a clear breakdown of a complex topic, presented beautifully.

Tangentially related, the documentary The Watchmaker's Apprentice [0] is a captivating look at the dedication it takes to create a mechanical watch. It's amazing that it's possible for a single person to craft each tiny cog and spring from scratch and put it all together.

[0] http://www.thewatchmakersapprentice.com/

There’s no doubt that smart watches offer way more functionality than a mechanical watch which is appealing to most consumers. However, what you’re buying with mechanical watches is more a form of art these days, and, for certain watches (eg Rolex) a status symbol. As someone who has always been drawn to watches (of all kinds), I really enjoyed this article. I even took off my watch (Omega Planet Ocean) and peered through the exhibition case back to take a look at the balance wheel and double barrels. Thanks for sharing!

Beautiful.

This guy's stuff is always a joy.

I have an Oris Aquis Date that I purchased for myself a few months ago, I love looking at the flywheel movement and hearing the tick when I put it up to my ear.