An automatic watch is a mechanical watch that winds itself as your wrist moves. It has no battery: inside there is a spring that tightens with each turn of the rotor and a balance wheel that swings at a steady rhythm. Choosing one well is simpler than it looks if you take the decisions in order.
1. The budget
The price sets which materials and which movement you can expect. This is how the catalogue breaks down:
| Price band | Watches | With sapphire | Longest reserve | Most reserve in the band |
|---|
Under €300, Japanese movements with mineral or Hardlex crystal dominate, although a few already have sapphire. Between €300 and €600 sapphire becomes common. Between €600 and €1,000 come the Swiss watches with 80 hours of reserve. Around €1,000 the step up is in finishing and mechanics, such as the high beat rate of the Citizen Series 8 or the 70 hours of the Seiko Prospex 1965.
2. The movement
The movement is the engine and decides three things you will notice every day: how long it runs off the wrist (the power reserve), whether you can set it to the second (hacking seconds) and what a service costs. Look at the movement first and the name on the dial second: a Seiko 5 Sports and a Prospex Turtle share the same 4R36. Every movement in the catalogue is on the movements page.
3. The size
The most common mistake is looking only at the diameter. The measurement that decides whether a watch fits is the lug-to-lug, from tip to tip of the lugs, which should not be wider than your wrist. The guide on how to measure your wrist has a calculator for every watch.
4. The crystal
Sapphire barely scratches and is what you want on an everyday watch. Seiko’s Hardlex and mineral glass scratch sooner but are cheap to replace. The differences are in sapphire, Hardlex or mineral.
5. The water
Water-resistance ratings are a laboratory pressure. With 100 m you can swim; for scuba diving, look for 200 m and ISO 6425. It is all in the water resistance guide.
Then compare
With those five answers, the watch finder narrows the catalogue to three watches and the comparison tool puts them in columns, with the best figure in each row highlighted.