You keep seeing all of these cool people wearing watches and you finally decided that you want to buy your own watch. Picking the right watch is such a great feeling and you get to join a club some illustrious folk. The tough part is picking that perfect watch. It can be quite an investment, depending on the watch you decide to get, so you definitely want to choose carefully. You have made a great decision by jumping into the watch world and may be thinking about buying them online. Do not worry, there is an option for you, no matter your taste or budget and we are going to guide you in the right direction.

Watch movements

When you start getting into the watch world, the word “movement” is going to come up a lot. The movement of your watch is defined by the way that the minute and second hands sweep around the face of your watch and the inner mechanisms that produce those “movements”. The movement of your watch encompasses it’s entire practical function, which is to tell time. Without movement, your watch would not be able to tell time.

There are 3 type of watch movements: quartz, mechanical and automatic. We will give some explanations of each type of movement.

Quartz

If you already own a watch, it is probably a quartz watch. These are easily the most popular types of watches. The average person you see wearing a watch is most likely wearing a quartz watch. This is because quartz watches are very cheap to manufacture and are really accurate at keeping time.

Quartz watches work by sending an electrical current through a piece of quartz, the piece of quartz vibrates and the circuits in the watch convert the vibrations into a pulse that moves the hands on your watch. They do not run as smoothly as the other two types we will mention, but they are a great multi-purpose watch. They can be worn with formal wear and they can be worn during manual labor or sports.

Mechanical

Mechanical watches are powered by a hand wound spring. These watches do not need batteries. The spring is wound up and slowly unwinds over time. That energy causes the second hand to move around the watch. Having a long spring means that your watch will work longer before being rewound. A shorter spring means that you will have to rewind your watch more often. Owning a mechanical watch is about more than just telling time. People pay more for mechanical watches because of the craftsmanship involved in making them.

Automatic

The automatic watch is another variation of the mechanical watch. These watches are powered by a wound spring and use gears to keep time. However, these watches do not require you to wind the watch yourself. Another name for these are “self winding” watches.

There is a rotor inside of these watches that freely spins every time you move your wrist. That rotor is connected to the mainspring in your watch. That rotor then winds up the mainspring in your watch. These are the Rolls Royces of watches. The main downside of these watches is that they do require occasional tune-ups to keep them accurate. These watches are not cheap, but there are options that are more affordable than others.

This pretty much covers the bases, these are the main decisions you will need to make when buying a watch. Ultimately, it is up to you to just buy whatever watch makes you happy. For even more information on finding a watch, you can view this article.