A watch can be both a practical item and a fashion statement at once. Watches come with two main types of movement: quartz and mechanical. Knowing the difference between these two types is extremely useful when it comes to choosing your ideal watch.
Function and Power Source
In many ways, quartz and mechanical movements actually function on similar principles. They both use small, regular and precisely timed bursts of power to drive the hands along at a steady rate (or tell the watch when to change the digital display), marking out the passage of time. However, there are a number of key differences.
One of the main differences is the source of power. Mechanical movements draw their power from the winding of a spring, known as the mainspring. Under tension the spring wants to unwind itself, but this is regulated into tiny, regular bursts of power by the escapement and balance wheel. This causes the hands to be steadily driven around, marking out accurate seconds, minutes and hours. Some mechanical watches use a weighted mechanism to wind the mainspring automatically as the wearer's wrist moves.
Quartz watches, on the other hand, are powered by a battery. This is regulated by a crystal oscillator into short bursts of electricity. The crystal oscillator contains a small piece of quartz crystal, hence the name of this movement type.
Display
Quartz watches are commonly available with both analogue and digital displays. The analogue displays are similar to those of mechanical watches, with hands against a standard clock face. The digital display usually uses a screen, with the bursts of energy from the battery telling a tiny computer when to change the display rather than driving the physical movement of hands.
Mechanical watches are also available in analogue or digital forms, but digital mechanical watches are much rarer and are often antiques from before the quartz movement was invented. Instead of using a screen, they rely on discs with multiple numbers printed on them. The discs move behind small windows, displaying one number at a time.
Accuracy and Price
On paper, a mechanical movement should be more accurate than a quartz one, because the motion of physical components is easier to predict and regulate. However, this is less true for watches than it is for clocks. Mechanical watches are more sensitive to the movement of the wearer's wrist and changes in orientation, which can affect accuracy significantly. As such, the question of which is more accurate largely depends on the quality of the individual watch.
Quartz watches are much quicker, easier and cheaper to manufacture. Mechanical watches are more labour-intensive and require metal components as opposed to plastic ones. This means that mechanical watches tend to be much more expensive. They are now mainly manufactured by premium brands such as Omega or Rolex, whose customers can pay for high-quality craftsman-made movements. Cheap mechanical watches are available but are of a much lower quality and less accurate.
The question of accuracy depends on the quality of the individual watch. Due to the differences in manufacturing costs and labour requirements, an accurate quartz watch can usually be obtained much more cheaply than an accurate mechanical one.
