![]() ![]() It’s still a great landing at the wrong airport. High end watchmakers do their best to make their automatics’ rotor a thing of beauty through ornamentation and skeletonization, and some go micro. ![]() You can’t stare at the engineering marvel, knowing that you own a complex, wonderful, wondrous, complete micro-machine. You can’t appreciate the full, unsullied splendor of the bits and pieces that makes a hand-wound mechanical watch a thing of unique beauty. But you can’t see both halves at the same time. ![]() Sure, you can tilt your automatic, self-winding watch to move the rotor to see both halves of the movement. In that case, all you’re getting is mild reassurance that you’re not wearing a quartz or Apple Watch. If you buy automatic watches with a transparent (a.k.a., exhibition) caseback, you’re only getting half the story – and not always not a good one.Īffordable automatic watches are powered by a movement so pedestrian, so math class ditchwater dull, that gazing at the mechanism is like staring at a microwave oven. If you buy watches with a solid caseback (e.g., the Rolex Explorer), you can stop stop reading now. That’s the spinny thing (a.k.a., oscillating weight) that winds the watch as you move your arm. The aesthetic issue with automatic watches is rotor-related. Where was I? Oh yes: don’t buy a self-winding watch. So, if we’re getting technical, a watch you have to wind is “a manual wind mechanical watch” or, less technically, a “hand-wound watch.” Both types qualify as a mechanical watch. At least not all the time.Įither you’re reading this to hate on me for daring to suggest your gorgeous automatic watch is a bad idea, or a newbie who’s just figured out that a self-winding watch is called an automatic watch – as opposed to a watch you have to wind. And people who don’t wear a watch (small children). People who buy Apple Watches (the majority of all watch buyers). People who buy quartz watches, ’cause they’re cheaper and more reliable. From the cheapest Seiko to the most expensive Patek Philippe, automatic watches are the mechanical marvel that every watch buyer wants. Self-winding watches? Mechanical timepieces without a battery? What’s not to love? Other than maybe having to reset the time from time-to-time. ![]()
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