Open Mike (Again): My New Watch (OT)

[This will be indulgent Writer Mike's LAST watch post for a while. Just in case you are not enjoying these. —Disciplined Editor Mike]

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I bought a watch. As you might have expected I would. (It's the best way to settle down these little—er, let's be nice to me and call them "enthusiasms"*—to which I intermittently fall prey. "Remember the Wista.")

Monday night I went to look at an Apple Watch (I saw the 40mm SE) at the local Verizon store. It's nice, and much easier to figure out than I feared. But I decided that really the last thing I need is another monthly bill**. [UPDATE: Carl tells me the Apple watch doesn’t incur an additional monthly expense unless you want it to have its own data plan. Otherwise it does all its tricks coordinated with your iPhone. If you’re in the house with WiFi the phone doesn’t even need to be near the watch. Away from WiFi it just needs to be within Bluetooth range. Sorry for the error. —Ed.] Then, yesterday morning, I spent several hours watching videos for alternative smartwatches. Interesting to come up to speed on those a bit, but they don't seem like my thing.

So, surfeited with looking at watches online, I decided I needed a dose of reality. I had to go to Canandaigua yesterday for another reason, so, was there a Seiko Authorized Dealer in Canandaigua? The Seiko website said yes: Crown Jewelry on Main Street.

No substitute for the real thing

It was just the place. I got waylaid on the way in by the many watches in the window, and there were many more inside, including a selection of estate watches. The young lady who helped me quickly decided I was asking questions that were too specific ("what is 10 bar in meters?"), so she went to get "the watch guy."

The watch guy turned out to be a man named Nick (right), who knows all about the stock, is a watch repairman and restorer, and owns 33 watches himself. He was wearing a Seiko dive watch on which he had replaced the stock flat crystal with a convex sapphire one. (I asked him to hold his watch up for this quick phone-snap portrait—made with his permission.) Turns out Nick is a photography enthusiast too—he does mostly macro work, mainly of watches as you might expect. We had an interesting conversation. He does know a whole lot. Not your average store clerk by a long shot.

In person
Seeing actual watches was instructive, too. (As it often is with cameras.) It turns out that I was wrong about the sizes: a 40mm case is not too big; it looks fine. Actually it does look a little more masculine and proportionate than the smaller, more traditional (for Seiko) 37mm case size.

I ended up buying a Seiko SNE031, which does have the smaller 37mm case. Nick says Seiko has been making a version of this model for some 50 years. There was a very similar but larger watch (the one just to the left of the red dot in the first picture), but it didn't display the weekday, which I decided I wanted. There was also a much better-looking watch that I was drawn to at first (just above the red dot), but the face was silvery and a little too close to the same tonal value as the hands once we got it out of the bright light, and I thought I might have trouble reading it in poor light.

Curiously, Monday night, looking at watches on the computer until I was bleary-eyed, I had picked out the Seiko SNE039 as being a candidate that had pretty much what I wanted. (It's an "Amazon's Choice," too.) Turns out that the watch I actually bought is the exact same thing except with a white face instead of black. I didn't even realize until I got home. Hey, at least I'm consistent. Seiko SNE032, Seiko SNE036, Seiko SNE047, and Seiko SNE042 are also all essentially the same watch as mine, just with different cosmetics.

The watch I bought is Solar—that is, driven by a quartz movement with a permanent battery that is recharged by light, an innovation first developed by Citizen.

On the plus side, the SNE031 "disappeared" on my wrist practically as soon as I put it on. Very comfortable. On the negative side, it's tough for me to read the day and date in poor light without my computer glasses on (my eyesight is 20/20 with glasses but worse without them).

With tax, my new watch cost only $1.22 more at Crown Jewelers than Amazon charges. Pretty great for a bricks-'n'-mortar store with a real live expert answering your questions. (He can answer your questions, too—yesterday he was shipping one of the fancier Seikos off to Utah. Call or email him if you want to buy a watch and tell him I sent you.)

So, then, why a watch? As an experiment. Many of you had good reasons for preferring a wristwatch, but I like to try things for myself. So I plan to wear this for a few months to see if I think there really is any advantage, for me, over using the iPhone as a pocket watch.

It'll at least be nostalgic; I wore a Seiko not dissimilar to this for years when I was younger. I enjoy nostalgia.

Experiment Part 2: I set it exactly to the second against the phone. Of course I'll have to reset it at the end of June, but then I'll be able to let it go three straight months without resetting. That should give me a bit of a read on its accuracy. I'll report back then. If I think of it.

Here's an interesting video about the accuracy of quartz movements.

More resources
In case you've been following along these past few days with interest, more tidbits for you: Here's a neat video about how quartz movements work. Explained by Steve Mould. (I wanted a quartz watch. Maybe it's because I was a kid when all the fuss over the Seiko Astron happened, but I find I gravitate to Seiko and I'm a fan of quartz movements. When I bought my first good watch, in Switzerland, at age 14, I bought a Seiko, and I was informed by the shop proprietor in no uncertain terms that it was not proper to buy a Japanese watch as a souvenir of Switzerland! But that was a year after the Astron and a Seiko was what I wanted.)

Another recommendation was supplied by Justin Ting and several other readers: "Confessions of a Watch Geek," a New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart. Finally, the two best books I've personally read about timekeeping are Revolution in Time by David S. Landes and, especially, Longitude by Dava Sobel, which deservedly won many awards. It's been a long time since I read either, but I remember really liking Longitude, the all-too-human story of the the first marine chronometer and its star-crossed inventor. Along with Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, one of the best books on tech I've read.

Oh, and the best watch in the world? Not one from the "holy trinity" of Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, and Patek Philippe. It's a Citizen. That's right, a Citizen. And quartz. Check out the Citizen Eco-Drive Caliber 0100. "The most accurate watch anyone has ever produced, anywhere, ever" (Hodinkee)—accurate to well under two minutes over a human lifetime without external influence. (The best mechanical watches manage the same accuracy over the course of a month.)

Oh...and, right after I bought this, while Nick was still in the back adjusting the band and retrieving the box, I started thinking about what my next watch was going to be. Settle down, Mike.

It's a good thing I'm not rich. I'd just waste more money.   :-)

Mike

*I used to follow common parlance and call it "OCD"—humans love intensifiers—but then I read a book about OCD, which is a very serious disorder on a different level altogether than getting all hot about a new watch (or camera). Calling it "OCD" or "an obsession" is akin to a well-fed individual who hasn't stuffed his face in three hours saying "I'm starving"—something I've also stopped doing. ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." —Inigo Montoya.)

**Although it's a significant safety device for seniors who live, or spend time, alone—it can detect a fall and send out a distress signal. So I'll probably have one eventually. Consider Kristine Hinrichs' comment from yesterday:

"I have the Apple Watch for a variety of reasons (excuses for tech). However, the primary reason is the fall detection feature. I’m out alone before dawn almost every day, often along the Lake Michigan shore. I’m paranoid about falling and being alone where no one knows exactly where I am. If I fall, a voice asks if I’m OK. If I don’t respond in 60 seconds, 911 is called. I can also activate it manually. It gives me peace of mind—and keeps my friends and family from worrying. Get the watch."

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Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark Rouleau: "I too wear a Seiko solar. Supposedly runs for 10 months on two minutes of sunshine. Since I live in Rochester that seemed possible."

Mike replies:  :-)

Howard W. French: "The Seiko SNE039 (black face) is available for $99 on Amazon, which is a pretty dramatic discount if the only difference is cosmetic, i.e. the color scheme."

Mike replies: The prices fluctuate daily and it's a few dollars higher now, but you're basically right—and yes, it is the same watch as mine.

There's a bit more to the story. Quartz watches still account for 97% of the market, in volume, but a lot of the profit in the market now is in luxury mechanical watches, and the high-volume, low-cost makers are in a bit of a bind. As Nick put it to me, "mechanical watches used to be a niche market; now all watches are a niche market." (At least I think he used the word "niche"—maybe he said "specialty.") One of Seiko's huge strengths has long been in making very conservative, plain, but highly capable quartz wristwatches of almost incredibly high value—like that amazing solar watch for a mere ~$100, a triumph of modern technology and manufacturing.

But, and as Sir Mix-a-Lot said it's a very big but, Seiko doesn't really want to be in that segment of the market any more! It's trying to position itself as being more upmarket. So it has actually banished the Essentials line—where all the practical quartz watches reside—from its own main website. If you just go to Seiko's global website, you won't find it listed among its new "brands" categorizations. It still exists, but to get there, you might have to Google "Seiko Essentials." (It's still accessible on seikousa.com). Apparently Seiko would like you to think that its basic line is the 5 Sports automatic line of self-winding mechanical watches (also very high-value, but less accurate, less practical watches than their quartz counterparts). Although it does retain some quartz lineage in some of its flagship Grand Seiko brand watches, including in the groundbreaking new Spring Drive movement, it's passing strange that the progenitor of the quartz revolution is now quietly returning more and more to making mechanical watches.

So the SNE039 is a bit of a threatened species—probably not on the endangered list yet. But actually Seiko is not pushing its traditional strength any more.

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Seiko and Citizen watches are great products when you want to have appreciable quality and still some leftover lunch money. I read a lot of blogs about watches for a while (yeah, these temporary passions can happen for all sorts of things!), and once I mustered the courage to go to a Rolex store to try one, gape in amazement, and tell the clerk who couldn't give a crap about me that I would think about it. So I eventually got myself one of the Orange Monster watches from Seiko, because I wanted a mechanical movement, and I loved the design of dive watch. I took it diving twice, but now it's mostly my daily timepiece. Since it's mechanical, it's not the most accurate, but I check it regularly and adjust it using the noon signal on the radio. That's what I also do with my grandfather clock, formerly owned by my actual grandfather!"

Herman Krieger: "And, if you need a watch repairer:

Peter Wright: "Patek Philippe sends out a lavishly produced 'free' quarterly magazine to its owner list, so I get a copy every so often. The photography in it is excellent. It always includes good articles on fine art, exotic geographic locations, and of course Patek watches. It comes in the mail in a plain brown heavy duty, opaque plastic envelope, without any company logos or indicators whatsoever: just my name and address. I am sure the postman thinks I subscribe the to the worst imaginable pornography. I fear he may be right!"

Benjamin Marks: "Three things.

"First, congratulations! That Seiko is a great piece and I think/hope it is going to make you very happy.

"Second: Regarding accuracy: I remember a comment made by a watch guy on one of the forums to the effect that he changed watches every day and wound and set the mechanical watches when he put them on after a period of inactivity. In practice this meant that his watches only needed to be accurate over the 18 hours he was wearing them on a given day—a standard (say 15 seconds a day) that almost any watch from the last 30 years could meet.

"Third: watch makers are a crafty breed. There is a Seiko (massive, expensive thing) that talks by radio to an atomic clock several times a day and resets itself according to that standard. So it doesn't need to be accurate to several seconds per human life, because it is adjusting on the fly to a very accurate standard frequently. Clever, although I despair when I think of any situation in my own life that might need that level of precision. The thing is also solar powered, but looks like it weighs enough to leave one arm longer than the other."

Mike replies: Regarding your last point, there are actually two types. One is the so-called radio-controlled watch, which, between the hours of midnight and some very early hour of the morning, will reset itself according to the radio signal broadcast from the atomic clock of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. (There are other atomic clocks broadcasting elsewhere in the world.) One problem is that some devices won't receive the signal if you live too far away from Denver. As with  all radio reception devices, some are better at pulling in signal than others.

The other is simply a bluetooth watch, which checks in with your smartphone, which gets its time signal from GPS satellites and is generally accurate to 50 milliseconds or less. If you want to find out how accurate your computer or phone is—for those in the U.S.—go to time.gov and it will tell you both the Official U.S. Time and also how far off your device is. My Mac Mini is off by a whopping 152 milliseconds this morning—more than a tenth of a second!—but it's usually far less than that.

Naturally, watch aficionados feel that's cheating, somehow, and that a timepiece should keep track of time independently of other devices. I personally like it. Here's a really gorgeous radio or bluetooth watch that is made for the JDM (Japanese domestic market) but that you can actually buy from an exporter on Amazon, with all of Amazon's protections. It has its own app!

The Oceanus will be accurate right down to its limit of precision virtually all the time. So here's where we need Ctein—well, I do, anyway, maybe you don't. If you have a watch with a jump second hand—that is, a second hand that jumps from one index to the next rather than moving from one to the next smoothly (and we'll assume for the sake of argument that the jump is instantaneous, which obviously it can't be), how accurate can it be? My presumption is that it's exactly correct once a second, but that it can be off by as much as almost a second potentially added to the inaccuracy of the syncing device. That is, if your smartphone is off by 30 ms, then your watch could never be off by more than 1.2999 (9 repeating, however you write that) seconds. Then we would have to add in the watch's possible error in between synchronizations. But I'm definitely no physicist and mathematician. So I'd probably say a quartz watch with a jump second hand that syncs to a phone is probably "accurate to within a second." But that's its accuracy continually, since its rate of error isn't allowed to continue to accrue.

Curiously, re your comment "I despair when I think of any situation in my own life that might need that level of precision," actually our need for time precision in daily life is usually very loose indeed. One cultural norm that might be changing is that when you look at a clock with hands, you will customarily round to the nearest five-minute increment if you're telling someone else the time—sometimes even to the nearest half-hour. If it's 5:22 and someone asks "What time is it?", you might say "about twenty after" but you might also say "coming up on half-past." This could be changing as more and more young people never learn to use a clock with hands and are only familiar with digital readouts. If their phone says "10:13" and someone asks them the time, they'll say "ten-thirteen," not "about quarter after."

In fact, I seem to remember that a young person in our family once asked what "quarter to" meant when I used the expression....

Dori: "Solar Seikos are pretty neat. I went with a Seiko Prospex Padi Solar SNE435P1. I have automatic watches too, but it's nice not to worry about winding them, good in case of a swim (though mainly desk diver for me), and I don't have to worry so much about having something too expensive on my wrist potentially getting banged around. Something else that's a plus, really good luminescence so I don't have to bring out the brightness of the sun from the phone to just read the time at night."

hugh crawford: "You do know that Seiko was also a camera and shutter manufacturer right? Always wanted a Zenobiaflex just because, well, who wouldn’t want a Zenobiaflex?

"There, I fixed that pesky off-topic posting ratio for you."

Ernest Zarate: "I was an elementary school teacher for 30 years (now retired), having taught in a number of different schools and classrooms. All the rooms had a wall clock in them as a standard feature. Anytime I taught intermediate (5th/6th grade) I often covered up the clock with a sign that said: 'Time will pass. Will you?' No one on earth is more attuned to time than students (recess, lunch, dismissal). My goal was to engage the students in their learning enough to have them ask if they could simply keep working rather than leave.

"One room I was in for a few years had a delightfully frustrating wall clock that never told the correct time. It always displayed times that were hours ahead (or behind) the actual time. It would even change its wildly inaccurate time during the day, the hands spinning forward lazily or quickly until they would stop at some other random point. The solution ended up being a trip to IKEA to purchase a $10 wall clock, battery operated. One of many purchases out of my pocket during those three decades.

"Another school had all the classroom clocks tied to the main computer (a huge monolithic thing menacingly hanging on the staff room wall) I dubbed HAL 9000. The clocks would all gain time each week until it would be several minutes fast, making on-time students tardy—and making for unhappy parents. It was the VP’s job to reset the clocks (a mildly onerous, 24-hour process) when the complaints from everyone reached a level she determined as too much.

"I currently have a wristwatch after not having one for a couple decades. I went with the Apple Watch Series 6, as it synced smoothly with my phone and computer. It also has apps that tie to my Tesla and makes sending commands to the car easier than having to dig out my phone. It took a couple of weeks to get used to wearing a watch again, but now it feels pretty good. It does not incur any fees."

Mike Hess: "My grandfather owned a jewelry store in Northwest Minnesota for 39 years. He was trained as a watchmaker after WWII ended. He was a Seiko dealer. I have always had a soft spot for them. I especially love their 1960s designs. After he retired, he held onto all his watch parts and even had a large inventory of repairs that were never picked up. My uncle has his watchmaker's bench and tools. Plus, the pile of old watches belonging to others is there, too."

Comments

[Peter Wright]

Setting your new watch to the correct date at the start of July will not involve interfering with the time: You just pull out the crown to the second position and a slight turn will advance the date, (turning it the other way will advance the day). All this while the movement ticks on regardless, so you will get a good idea of the accuracy over the months. Congrats btw. And we expect an update in a few months!

[Richard Parkin]

Re: the last thing I need is another monthly bill, there’s no monthly bill for the gps version and if you are referring to the fall detection, that works if you have your phone nearby.

[Paul in AZ]

Good choice.
I'm a watch guy ~trashed my cell phone several years ago. Replacing a watch with a blue face [hard to read in low light] I allowed my son to talk me into a Seiko Auromatic. Mistake. I find I have to wind it daily to make sure it keeps running. It also gains a couple minutes of time per week. Annoying.

Shoudda bought a quartz movement to get accurate time with no need to remember to wind it.

If a product does only one thing it should do it well to be worth buying. Mechanical [automatic] movements don't keep accurate time.

[Dave]

Mike,

All the watch discussion got me to get a new battery for my Seiko Quartz Chronograph.

Normally, the second hand for the regular watch function will move every two seconds when the battery is low.

The minute hand of the chronometer had stopped moving, so I figured I'd better start looking at watches again.

The lady at the chain jewelry store installed the battery in a few minutes and now the minute hand of the chronometer is working again! Woo hoo!

The battery didn't cost me a dime because I still have the receipt for the "free batteries for life" certificate that I guard with my life.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking at new watches. :>)

[Francisco Cubas]

Regarding the best watch in the world, I think that judging a watch only by its accuracy is like judging a camera just by the resolution of its sensor.

As you remember well, the Astron finished the wars of accuracy in favor of quartz movements over mechanical watches.

But now that watches are really obsolete for almost every practical reason, I think their more an experience than anything else, so there are other things to evaluate when thinking about the best.

I also love Seiko, own three of them, and I love what they do in the Grand Seiko line and specially the Spring Drive, an automatic mechanical movement that uses a quartz crystal and a magnetic field to regulate the escapement. This produce a unique continuous sweeping move of the second hand that is a joy to watch. Is also the last really practical innovation in watchmaking so far (the Zenith Oscillator is very interesting, but still a work in progress).

[You're right, Francisco. I was being hyperbolic there. I get over-enthusiastic. --Mike]

[Marc Rochkind]

OK watch, but kind of dressy, especially these days. Won't look good at all with shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. Treat yourself to a G-Shock, such as the GWM5610-1 (around $94). It's radio sync ("Multiband 6") probably works OK from NY. Or, there are several similar and cheaper models without MB 6, some with solar.

Or, if you don't like the look of a G-Shock, the classic casual/sports watch is a dive watch, even if you never go deeper than 2 ft. Many choices, some < $100.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

A very austere choice that looks like it will serve faithfully for years.

Not to tempt you into another compulsive obsession but...you -do- know that watches have become an investable "asset class", more popular each year. Just gaze upon Sotheby's current "Luxury Watch Auctions", for example.

Also, you -do- also know that the Apple Watch can display photos from your library, don't you? Quite well, too, allowing for close magnifications. And you can use it as a Dick Tracy-style phone, too? And you can use it to listen to music? And you can.... ;-)

[Daniel]

On your comment about Amazon pricing compared to the real store you can visit.
It pays to double check when looking. Just got some tools from a real store that were 10% less than Amazon. A friend bought them from amazon and they had come from the real store. So, knowing the price difference helped and kept the dollars in our area.

Just as with the Big Box stores, looking around can often result in a better deal and meeting people who actually know the product they are selling.

[Albert Smith]

"On the negative side, it's tough for me to read the day and date in poor light without my computer glasses on..."

Big picture, little picture... I also can't read my calendar without reading glasses, so I don't set it.

It will be the 23rd for 24 hours. It will only be 3:47pm for about a minute. If I don't know the date, out comes the phone. But I can know the time with a 20 degree twist of the wrist.

[Gavin Mclelland]

1 bar of pressure is 10m of water - I work in subsea construction - it is one of the things you don't have to think about after awhile

[Dan B.]

I think you made a fine, choice, Mike - Seiko is actually a modern classic to me in terms of watchmakers, one of the original brands that disrupted the watch industry half a century ago... And solar recharging really sticks it to the iWatch daily charge routine, what a bonus. Plus, there's a wee bit of a camera link to it given that the Epson R-D1 analog dials were done by Seiko, Epson's parent company.

[Italianwineguy]

I hear ya. we all must be having a little watch fever, I just sprung for this one:

https://bit.ly/2Usogkd

[Holy crap! Now THAT is a watch. --Mike]

[Gerard Geradts]

Honger
For my mother, having survived the Dutch "Hongerwinter" of 1944/45, the words "Hunger" and "Hungry" were on the top of the list of taboo-subjects. As a child I was always corrected by the same sermon "You don't know what hunger is, you should say I am having an appetite", most of the times followed by one of her wartime stories, the favourite being the two milk bottles, that exploded because of the freezing cold.
Second on that list was the throwing away of leftovers of a dinner. I remember inviting my parents for a dinner I cooked at my house. After a pleasant evening, upon leaving, my mother saw me emptying a bowl of leftover pasta in the bin. She got very, very angry. I had never seen her that angry. It must have distressed her very much. This happened in 1980. So 35 years after the fact. The ignorance of my youth allowed me to be annoyed by this all. Even in my thirties I acted annoyed. Maybe I should have shown a little bit of understanding and compassion. Even in the last year of her life, she died at 96, she once again told me the story of the two milk bottles, and asked me if she'd ever told me this. I couldn't help but answer "Yeah mum, maybe a thousand times". Stupid of me, of course.

[Aalok Kacha]

Congratulations on the new watch. It's an excellent choice.

I hate to do this to you, but the geography is compelling.

https://davidlane-design.com

[Joseph]

If you can do without the pulse oximeter, refurbished series 5 Apple watches with cellular connection are available in like new condition on eBay (caveat emptor, but worked for us) at considerable savings compared to the Amazon refurb that is linked above.

My wife and I are seniors who both wear these Apple watches for fall detection (and that allows emergency services and authorized family members to immediately determine our location anywhere that there is cellular reception), but additionally they are endlessly useful for receiving news headlines, stock market updates, messages (including second factor authentication for account security), tapping on my (hard of hearing) wife's wrist to let her know that she is needed in another room, seeing real time pictures of our granddaughter's activities, alerts (including weather events, and monitoring credit card and financial account charges), pausing music, not missing phone calls (and lots more) whenever our iPhones are not within reach.

I continue to marvel at being able to wear on my wrist a gorgeous internet connected supercomputer, digital display, cardiac monitor, remote iPhone camera EVF and shutter release, wrist radio (actually at least four different radios - cellular LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS), waterproof piece of jewelry. (All at less cost that one of those ugly plastic medic alert panic buttons that only work at home.)

Who needs a mechanical or quartz watch (or a short wave radio to receive WWV time broadcasts) when my communicating Apple watch always remains time accuracy to within about 50 milliseconds of an internet atomic clock time server?

The future has arrived! WOW!!!!!

[Kye Wood]

This is something you are unlikely to read elsewhere. But. My considerable experience with Seiko has proven to me that the Solar and Kinetic models are accurate to 3 seconds per year. Which is unmatched byanything except the top line Citizen range that starts at $1000.

Ps. Ginault are built to higher tolerances than anything I've seen. And I've seen them aaaaaall.

[Eric Brody]

I have the Apple watch model 6 and love it. In my youth I tried to be a watch sophisticate but did not have the money for a Rolex Submariner, my dream watch. I was gifted a Universal Geneve watch with day, date, month year, stopwatch, etc, a real chronograph. It required numerous expensive repairs. Since most folks carry a phone, with many apps, the tradition of a wristwatch has gone by the wayside, at least amongst millenials. The last real watch I had was a Casio, solar powered watch, loved it but it was "just"a watch. My Apple 6 tells me the time, here, and in New Zealand where my daughter, son in law, and grandchildren live; it tells me my heart rate and whether I have atrial fibrillation (I don't but have a few friends who do), my emails, my messages, my activity levels, the weather, a timer, my calendar, it even tells me my oxygen saturation! I think I paid US$400 for it and it is worth every penny. I look forward to the next iteration which rumor has it will have blood glucose (I'm not diabetic but might like to know my blood sugar), and blood pressure. And it tells the time, accurately enough though perhaps not as accurate as the referenced Casio. Clearly it's not for everyone but if you like to have a computer on your wrist, it's hard to beat. And not, I'm just a retired pediatrician, a gadgeteer, but do not work for Apple nor do I own their stock, darn.

[Roland]

In case you want to geek out on watches, check out Bulova Accutron tuning fork watches. Space age watch technology at its finest!
But beware, you might be considering buying a vintage Spaceview afterwards (don't ask me how I know)...

[Øyvind Hansen]

Jack Forster of the Hodinkee video is a notable "double wrister". Apple watch on the right wrist, traditional watch on the left. By the way, If you get an Apple watch you shouldn´t get an SE, series 5 and 6 have an always on display that makes a huge difference in daily wear, no more annoying flick of the wrist to make the display come active (in about 80% of the tries).

[Keith]

You've put forth enough posts on watches that I'm now getting pop-up ads for watches. About 15 years ago my wife and I went on a cruise to the western Caribbean area. One stop had genuine Swiss watches without the import tariffs we have in the US. I picked up a Swiss made ESQ for @ $125. A few years later I took it by my local jeweler/watch repair for a battery. He pulled the back cover and paused, put on his loupe and closely examined the internals for a bit, then commented, "Wow, that is a very finely made timepiece". At least it confirmed I didn't end up with a fake.

[Paul Judice]

I'm amazed that you can buy a beautiful piece of design that keeps very accurate time for so very little money. I was drawn to mechanical watches for a time because of their stubbornness to indulge in outdated complexity. I once traded a friend a Canon macro lens for a watch strap (not even with a buckle) to my Panerai mechanical watch. A marvel of optics and sophisticated autofocus for a tiny strip of lizard skin. I believe the strap had a higher retail value.

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Many thanks for all this Mike.
Co-incidentally, I’ve been considering a update to my wristwatch.
Been down the road of automatics, but the servicing (3-5 yearly CLA equivalent) and associated cost is a little too steep. So I’ve also been looking for solar, quartz, with day & date. Only addition for me is 100m water resistance. If only I could find that in an SNE047 like model with 100m.
Will have to keep looking.
One of your other commenters mentioned Vostok - now that was an interesting diversion, especially the 24 hour face.

[Howard W. French]

The Seiko SNE039 (black face) is available for $99 on Amazon, which is a pretty dramatic discount if the only difference is cosmetic, i.e. the color scheme.

[Dennis ng]

Waiting for series 7 as it would have Gloucose measurement. (6 has oxygen which is important for Wuhan virus.)

[Oleg Shpak]

I call my Seiko Premier Automatic Tamagochi because it requires daily attention, and stops working if neglected. I have it for 15 years or so and wear it from time to time. But I much prefer a completely self-contained G-Shock Rangeman, that does not require any care at all and always shows the right time.

[Frank Gorga]

In response to Ernest Zarate's comment regarding clocks and teaching...

I'm a retired chemistry professor. Near the end of my career, we built a new science building. The first time I got to tour the essentially completed building I was aghast to discover that all of the classroom clocks had been placed above the board at the front of the room... i.e. where the students could see it but not the instructor. Clearly yet another example of things designed and signed off on by folks who have and will never use the system they OK'd.

Being a known troublemaker, I agitated against this situation. My argument was simple... the function of a classroom clock is to allow the instructor to time their performance (and good lectures are indeed performances). After much ado, the clocks were eventually moved!

[Frank Gorga]

In response to Ernest Zarate's comment regarding clocks and teaching...

I'm a retired chemistry professor. Near the end of my career, we built a new science building. The first time I got to tour the essentially completed building I was aghast to discover that all of the classroom clocks had been placed above the board at the front of the room... i.e. where the students could see it but not the instructor. Clearly yet another example of things designed and signed off on by folks who have and will never use the system they OK'd.

Being a known troublemaker, I agitated against this situation. My argument was simple... the function of a classroom clock is to allow the instructor to time their performance (and good lectures are indeed performances). After much ado, the clocks were eventually moved!