Automatic vs Quartz

An automatic watch is powered by a mainspring wound by a weighted rotor that spins as your wrist moves. A balance wheel oscillates several times a second to regulate the release of that energy. Every part is mechanical.

A quartz watch passes a small current through a quartz crystal cut to vibrate 32,768 times per second. A circuit counts those vibrations and advances the hands once a second. This is why quartz seconds hands tick and automatic ones sweep.

A chronometer-certified automatic is rated to -4/+6 seconds per day. Over a year, that is up to half an hour of drift. A standard Swiss quartz movement drifts around fifteen seconds per year.

If accuracy is your only criterion, the comparison is over. Mechanical watchmaking survived the quartz crisis on craft and feeling, not performance.

An automatic needs servicing every five to seven years, typically $200 to $600 depending on the movement. Skip it long enough and lubricants dry out, causing wear that costs considerably more to fix.

A quartz watch needs a battery every two to three years, usually $15 to $30 with a pressure test. Over twenty years, an automatic can easily cost more in servicing than a good quartz watch costs to buy.

Buy quartz if you want to put a watch on and never think about it, if you rotate between several watches and hate resetting them, or if the watch is going to a teenager, a job site, or a suitcase.

Buy automatic if you want to enjoy the object as much as the function, if you like the idea of a machine that will still run in fifty years, or if you plan to wear the same watch most days.

There is a third answer for chronographs specifically: meca-quartz, which pairs a mechanical stopwatch module with a quartz timekeeping base.