Automatic or Quartz: Which One Should You Buy?
One winds itself from your wrist and never needs a battery. The other keeps better time and asks nothing of you. Neither is the right answer for everyone.
The honest difference
A quartz movement is driven by a battery and a vibrating crystal. It is accurate to within seconds a month, costs less to build, and will sit in a drawer for a year and still be right when you pick it up.
An automatic winds itself from the motion of your wrist. It has no battery at all. It will typically run a few seconds fast or slow per day, and if you leave it unworn for two days it stops and needs resetting.
So why buy an automatic?
Because of the seconds hand. A quartz hand ticks once per second; an automatic sweeps. On a skeleton dial you can watch the escapement working. It is a mechanical object doing something visible, and that is most of the appeal.
And why buy quartz?
Because it is honest about what it is for. A solar quartz chronograph never needs a battery change and never needs setting. If you want a watch you can put on and forget, quartz is not the compromise — it is the correct answer.
In our selection
The Casirui skeletons and the Tissot PRX are automatic. The Casio Edifice is solar quartz. The chronographs are quartz, which is why their subdials start and stop cleanly. Each listing says which, under Movement.