Watch Talks

How to choose a watch ?

Everything you need to know about watches before you buy one.

 

These days, watches have become something like a gadget that can replace the jewelry. Watches are no longer just the instruments to show a time. They are concerned as the measure of prestige. Expensive, luxury watches show the high class and the pride of their respective owners.

Watches should be fitted to the style of life and nature of each individual. Strictly elegant watch would look rather funny on athlete’s or runner’s wrist. The second thing is that everyone should aim for the watches they can afford. For example, if you can’t afford an expensive Rolex or other luxury timepiece, you don’t end up with a fake one.

 

 

Watches are mainly divided due to their use:

 

Sports – watches for people living in rather active way. Sports watches are waterproof, resistant to most of the possible impacts. These watches are often made from high quality steel, titanium. These watches are strongly recommended for professionals as one of their work tools.

Practical – my favorite type of watches. You can wear them in most cases, because of its practicality. You can wear them daily and even for different occasions – they just always look appropriately. Their durability is more than enough, so they can last for a long time.

Elegant – as the name suggests, these watches apply during important ceremonies, receptions, business meetings, etc. However watches with a large cases or set with diamonds should not appear on ordinary business meetings, they are prestigious watches, which are applied to the banquets or ceremonies to show the high style and class.

 

 

The most important aspect in choosing a watch is choice of its heart – the mechanism that will be responsible for life of all watch functions. Mechanisms are divided into: 

 

Mechanical – driven by a spring called ‘Mainspring’, which must be wound from time to time. The power reserve tells you how much time the watch can run until it needs to be fully wound again. These are some of the more expensive mechanisms, because the creation of the mechanical movements is the real art and craftsmanship. They are less accurate than quartz mechanisms. Characteristic feature of these mechanisms is the smooth motion of the seconds hand.

Automatic – powered by a spring mechanism and winding rotor that drives the balance during the movement of the watch. With a sudden movement of the watch, we can hear the noise caused by the movement of the balance. The movement of the second hand is also characteristic to the watches with this type of the mechanisms.

Quartz – Most accurate of all given mechanisms, characterized by relatively low price. It is supplied with power from the battery.

 

Mechanical movement

Self-winding mechanical movement

 

The next point is choice of the attachment to our wrist. There are straps and bracelets available to choose:

 

Bracelets – here is a quite nice variety of materials, but the most popular of them is simply steel or steel coated in gold, rose gold because of its price. Other materials are aluminum, gold (18K), platinum, titanium, however, the price of watches made from 18k gold or platinum starts from thousands of pounds. Ceramic bracelets starts getting more and more recognition because of its well-known durability and weight.

Straps – the main material of straps in watches with the normal price tag is leather (calf skin) or rubber. If you are ready to pay more for watch, then you have a great choice of crocodile, ostrich, snake, lizard and shark straps.

 

 

An important element that protects our watch is glass. The cheapest material is just a mineral glass, which is less resistant to scratches and other damages, but the manufacturers are trying to constantly improve its quality. The second glass type to choose is a sapphire crystal that is the most resistant at the moment. Its hardness ranges from 8-9 Mohs, where diamond’s hardness is 10 Mohs – pretty solid. Sapphire glass can be found in watches from 200 pounds.

 

 

Apart from telling time, watches have various functions such as alarm, tachymeter, diving scale, chronograph, timer, power reserve indicator, helium valve, GMT. By selecting our watch we have to decide which of the above functions will be useful in daily use. For example, for globetrotters helpful solution will be the watch with adjustable time for two time zones.

 

 

The last one aspect is choice of the case. Nowadays there is a fashion for the watches with large and bulky cases, but we should choose according to the size of our wrist, because a large envelope will be hard and uncomfortable to wear on thin the wrist. The basic shape of the watch is circular – a classic. Besides, the classic shape we have also shapes like : rectangle, tank, square, oval, tonneau, asymmetrcial.

 

Me and too large watch

Me and well-fitted watch

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