A while ago I came to the conclusion that a Casio G-Shock is the best watch. They don't have to be expensive, a good one will sync the time multiple times a day, so it's always accurate. A good one also has small solar panels in the watch face, so the battery will never be empty, and all of them are really build to last.
From a pure functional perspective I think it's the best watch ever made. It basically tells you the correct time, always.
I keep one until the battery dies. Then I replace the battery with a second rechargeable lithium and a new watch band. By the next time the next battery goes dead, the case is shot, too.
Make absolutely sure that you follow the battery replacement directions carefully, reading the directions fully BEFORE attempting it. There are very tiny parts that can drop out and easily lost.
My is from LIDL (Auriol). Watches (Made in Germany) have a good quality, nice design and are very precise, apart also cheap (€10 - 40). The other one I've bought for €10 last year
Stop buying the marketing hype. An LED display alone is significantly more complex and engineered than any mechanical watch. Every smart watch on the planet is literally full orders of magnitude more complex than any mechanical watch.
If you said, "it's a small, simple, cool machine" that would be completely true. But they are not more engineered than nearly every other device you possess in your home, including the nearest set of $20 bluetooth earbuds.
Someone please tell me what the difference is between this sentiment and "I'll get an AI-generated PFP because it's cheaper". As far as I'm concerned either way it's " expensive traditional art" vs "mass-manufactured knockoff".
Do people have no respect for jewelers or not understand the work that goes into a good timepiece? Or is it that art is contempt-worthy when is used as a status symbol (in which case what about a $500 timepiece?)
This sentiment is more of "I want a 30.000$ NFT pfp even though good artists can go way cheaper for art commissions.". Equivilent of an AI generated PFPs in watches are those 10$ watches you see some street vendor is selling. They could look appealing for those without a clock and want to try one, but for someone that wants a quality watch, they lack quality.
There exists good quality watches for 100-500$ range that'll never die on you, and can last multiple next generations after you. Hell, even cheaper if you don't care that much about aesthetics. It's dumb af to drop above 4 digit numbers on a watch where you're not getting any reasonable difference from any perspective whatsoever. Similar thing goes with PFPs.
Mechanical: You're looking for a Seiko. Bulletproof, affordable mechanical watches. They need service every 5 years or so and you will need to adjust the time regularly as mechanical watches are basically shitty at their jobs. I have a Seiko Monster and it rules. Also check out the Cocktail Time line, really cool but maybe 500+. The Seiko Alpinist is also awesome.
Quartz: If you are interested in keeping precise time, then you want a quartz movement. Cheaper, keep better time, but you will need to feed them batteries occasionally, which is annoying every decade or so. Lots of brands make decent quartz movements. Watch snobs talk shit, but they've been brainwashed by the Swiss marketing.
Maybe the best option: solar-powered, radio-adjusted movements. Casio makes a number of good options (g-shocks and others) and Citizen's Eco-Drive is also well-regarded.
Any option you choose will eventually need service over a lifetime, but mechanical watches have by far the highest maintenance costs for obvious reasons.
Casio is my default for cheap and durable. I have a HDD-600 still running on its original battery for at least 15 years (it outlived the original strap which had rubber rot). And when I do change the battery it will be 4 screws and a gasket.
Solar-powered as far as I understand is a gimmick since the solar cell won't necessarily even work well after 10-15 years. Not worth avoiding such a small amount of maintenance.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that the longevity of the solar models is indeterminate due to new technologies. I imagine they will get better and better, though, as solar tech is constantly improving.
If all you care about is functionality, a $50 casio with a resin casing will have more complications than most expensive watches, be hundreds of times more precise, will last you decades and you will spend less time and money in maintenance over your lifetime than you would for one revision of a mechanical watch. They're practically superior in literally every way to a $30,000 watch.
But that's not my point, I'm specifically talking about art. $200+ watches are art for its own sake, arguing on the basis of quality/reliability is nonsensical. The only things that matter is esthetics and even more importantly for mechanical watches, the appreciation for the incredible history and intricacy of a well-built movement. There is a lot of craftsmanship to be appreciated there.
And it's fine if you don't care or can't justify the expense (I don't own a mechanical watch myself though I probably will at some point), but the original meme completely disregards the artistry and craftsmanship going into expensive watches and I am trying to expose the glaring cognitive dissonance of the consensus that "quartz watches better" but "AI PFP evil". Both are responsible for the collapse of an industry, so if you think there is a meaningful moral difference there please tell me.
Here's my take: the mechanical watch industry already collapsed, and the "small commission PFP art" hasn't fully yet. We should preserve as much of these artists' livelihoods as we can to soften the blow until a new equilibrium is reached where – just like with mechanical watches – only those with a real appreciation for art or a want for a status symbol will commission a real artist for their PFP. But that's a very different discourse from what I hear which is typically "AI PFP poopoo evil, if you get one you're worse than Hitler".
Some of us just want to know what time it is without pulling out our cell phones.
I used to have an employer that would give me a 15 minute break at random ass times like 9:07am and tell me to return 15 minutes after and I'd be pulling out my phone every 5 seconds and doing math. So I just got a cheap watch and sent my time to the same time as their clock and voila, I was a great employee.
It's the cuestion who needs a watch for $100.000 and why. Even for an billonair, even if he personally appreciate these technical marvels of a Pattek Phillipp (which the same craftsman who created it could never afford), everyone else doesn't give a shit if the guy is wearing a $100,000 or $100 watch, if it's not directly a plastic Casio.
The status symbol continues to be a very ugly disease, teaching others: I am someone important, commoners. The same ones in those days with the first mobile phones, they stood in the middle of the road looking ostentatiously around while they communicated loudly so that everyone knew they could afford this luxury, with the prices that still had this bricks at that time.
The evil of capitalism and savage consumerism.
Like you said, 99.9 % of people wouldn't recognize a Patek Philippe if it hit them upside the head. By definition it's not ostentatious. Rolexes are ostentatious (it's the only luxury brand most people know), but also incredibly cheap as far as mechanical watches go.
A Patek Philippe is a status symbol, but only to those very select few already in-the-know. And that is not mutually exclusive with those movements being incredible art. Is a Van Gogh ugly or evil just because some asshole bought the painting for $100.000.000? Art doesn't have to be collateral damage to your class consciousness just because rich people have more access to it.
Same with an van Gogh, I like to see his paintings in a Museum, where everybody can enjoy the work of great artists. I like to see the art of an Patek Philipp, but same as any other work which combine ingeniering with art. But I never would buy it, even if I had the money for it.
Even if it made with wood instead of platin or gold with diamonds.
Rolex isn't incredibly cheap lmao. It's mid to high price for luxury watches. The cheapest thing they sell is like $3k. Incredibly cheap for mechanical watches would be around the $100 mark for a Seiko 5 series or something.
Yes? I mean, what for? Nowadays, stones with impurities are more worth, because they are proof that the stone wasn't just created in a microwave (but mined under life-threatening conditions by poor people). It's all just artifically inflated money-making nonsense.
The $40 watch is probably better at telling time because there's a crystal oscillating there exactly 32768 times a second, instead of some gears and springs and shit that are roughly tuned to 10 Hz by a guy with a screwdriver.
Mechanical watches lose 10-15 secs per day which declines as they get older or aren't serviced, a $40 Casio might miss 30 secs per month, never needs servicing other than a battery change.
Mechanical watches are no longer utility items, they are fashion items that happen to tell time.
My phone tells me the time and can communicate with people, lets me access the Internet, and has games. And it doesn't evenb irritate the shit out of me when I need to type on a keyboard.
There is something special about a watch (especially a mechanical one) that a phone can't fulfill. It's a tiny machine operated by gears and that's just so amazing. When you get a watch where you can see the movement it just ticks the right boxes. And there are some really beautiful, amazing watches which don't require selling your house.
Which unfortunately means every time you pull it out you can get on lemmy, if you have a new email you can read and reply to it, you can play a quick bullet game of chess... Etc etc. Phones are great, but they are also finely tuned distraction boxes.
Good point for some reason I was only thinking of the "you're getting bullied at a road stop by third world police in a country you'll never go back to" types of situations.
It happened to me once and cost me about 70€ if I remember well, basically the fine magically was exactly the amount I had in there which they saw during the search..
CSB:
Just before the collapse of the USSR I was part of a youth sailing exchange program. They sent some kids here to compete in some races and we went there to compete. The whole thing was set up as a sort of goodwill ambassador thing. Back then rainbows were streaming out of all our asses because we thought that the end of the cold war would meant peace on earth and a new era of prosperity (oops). My dad gave me a G-Shock before I left.
The official exchange rate sucked. 2 USD per Ruble. Fortunately we stood out like sore thumbs as soon as we showed up and some local "entrepreneurs" kindly offered us much better exchange rates (the best I managed was 20 Rubles per USD).
Of course, these totally legitimate businessmen didn't limit themselves to currency exchange. They also dealt in direct barter.
They often tried to hawk one of their "military" Komandirskie watches for my G-shock. We're talking craptacular mechanical POSes where numbers would fall off the face if you looked at them too aggressively. I told them that I'd trade but not for a watch. I wanted a sable hat.
To show them how much better my watch was I took it off my wrist. Grabbed it by one strap and whipped it against the concrete floor as hard as I could. One strap popped off. I popped it back on while they laughed at me, showed them it still worked fine and I told them it was their turn. They didn't take me up on that or give me a sable hat.
But they gave up on trying to convince me that they had anything that could compete with my G-Shock. I've changed the battery on that thing twice since then. The light sucks and it looks basic AF but that thing will definitely outlive me and my whole family.
