This is one of the key issues in the world of watchmaking. What is the difference? And which one is better? These questions will be answered in this article, so read on and discover the answers to your queries.

Quartz watches swept the mechanical watch industry near submission in the late 1970s and 1980s. Since Hamilton created the first electric watch, the Ventura, in the late 1950s, the battery or quartz changed the way people saw time. Before quartz watches, it was part of the daily routine to reset the watch with the television or radio, the precision of the quartz movement and the longevity of the charge made this little routine a thing of the past. Quartz movements have become so ingrained in people’s everyday lives that automatic watches have almost become a distant memory. Brands like Omega, Tissot, and Oris tried to fight head-on with Japanese and American quartz watchmakers like Casio and Timex, but in the late 1990s and 2000s Swiss watch companies have fought the quartz revolution. Swiss watch companies are creating luxury watches, quality watches that are desirable and aspirational for all who see them.

But as a diver’s watch, what is the difference between a cheap quartz diver’s watch and a Swiss automatic diver’s watch? For example, what is the difference between a Timex Expedition Diver and an Oris Pro Diver, besides the obvious price difference of £ 2,200? They both offer the user the same basic surface diving functionality, but is there something else that makes automatic watches so much more expensive? Here are some key differences between automatic watch and quartz watch.

1. The Timex Expedition Diver timing will be more accurate than the Oris Pro Diver over a period of 1 month. The reason for this is that the Timex watch uses battery power to charge a capacitor which then powers the watch movement, whereas an automatic watch uses the movement to charge a spring that releases energy to the watch movement. A high quality automatic watch movement has a margin of error of + or – 1 second per day compared to a quartz watch variation that is less than 1 second per year. Should this be the same?
2. The Oris watch uses Swiss mechanical engineering to produce each movement by hand and the quality of each movement is tested before it can be shipped to retailers and sold to the general public. The Timex is a machine produced in a factory in China and one watch out of every 100 units is tested.
3. All Swiss manufacturers, such as Oris, use a unique serial number that allows the watch to be identified and each watch to be traced back to the point of sale and manufacture. Companies like Timex and Casio do not provide unique serial numbers due to the massive quantities of each item that are created on a daily basis.
4. The automatic watch only requires maintenance every 3 to 5 years. The quartz watch will need a new battery every 2 to 5 years depending on the use of its functions.
5. The automatic watch will stop and will need to be manually reset if it is left off the wrist for more than 40 hours. The quartz watch will continue to run until the battery fails or there is a mechanical failure.
6. There are minimal gadgets in the mechanical watch. There will be no on-board dive computer or dive recording facility, these features can be found in quartz watches that companies like Casio, Citizen, and Tissot make watches that have the ability to record data from your dives for use on a later date.

The key to think about is, will this assorted watch be a functional addition to the dive kit you already own, to give you dive data without having to buy a dive computer? If so, then a digital watch will give most of the information on its digital display, the key men’s watches for this are the Sea Touch and the Citizen Pro master.

Or if this watch is more than just a dive, should this dive watch be timeless and have the ability to be worn outside of diving? If the answer to this question is yes, an automatic diver’s watch is a perfect addition to a watch collection and is a great status symbol, as well as a useful piece of equipment for diving.