Quartz?

[Goodwatch]

If it’s quartz, it ain’t a real watch! True? Are we only enchanted by the mechanical watch? Preferably a chronometer? Some of the higher end brands that started to produce analogue quartz watches in the seventies, in an attempt to stop the tidal wave of cheap watches from Japan, promptly stopped when the mechanical watch entered its renaissance.

Omega still makes quartz versions, as does Breitling (very well executed, only a 15-second deviation a year). But I get the feeling that analogue quartz watches are on a lower plane than their mechanical siblings.

Rolex, and I must grand them that, never panicked and although they produced a quartz model, it only played a marginal role.

There were a couple of ‘mega quartz’ models from various makers, achieving astonishing accuracy. Think of <4-second deviation a year. No mechanical wrist chronometer could ever achieve this but yet these watches faded away into history.

There’s something irrational about the mechanical watch. If it is about time keeping alone, why not buy a (less expensive) quartz watch that is much more accurate and relatively maintenance free to boot?

What do you think? Leaving all those cheap 10 dollar imports out of the equation and concentrating only on the ‘better’ watches, will an analogue quartz watch ever gain the same status as the mechanical watch? From a WIS point of view that is.