| Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Mechanical time pieces that could even remotely be compared to a quartz in terms of precision and accuracy are few and far between and Seiko's 7s26 is certainly NOT among them by any means imaginable... The truth is, 7s26 is a proper workhorse, but not particularly precise even when compared to others from the same category. The 7s26 comes unregulated from the factory and its officail accuracy spec is an abysmal range of -35 to +45 seconds per day. In reality, with 7s26 one can expect a daily deviation in the range of 20s between the 6 positions and the actual accuracy depends quite a bit on your luck, but is often resonably OK. They are easily regulated, though... Basic regulation, I mean, nothing fancy. That still won't make the mechanism precise, but it can make it reasonably accurate if needed be, in the sub 10s area. Naturally, it will still fluctuate a bit, day to day, unlike a more precise mechanism would... Compare that to a Grand Seiko that achieves -3s to +5s daily even under demanding conditions. These, especially if regulated a bit more, can achieve sub 1s daily even during longer periods of time... Now that's precise. BTW, many people confuse the actual precision of a mechanism with the daily accuracy. Don't. Those are two very different things. :) Just to mention, older Seiko 5 with 63xx calibres were, in practice, a bit better then the ones with 7s26, IMHO, especially those sporting a 6319 with 21 jewels. The 6309 were nice too but had a weak spot in their design. The modern variants of 7s26, the 4r36 and 6r15 (don't let the designations fool you, it's the same calibre family) are a bit better but still nothing special. The factory spec for a 4r36 is still the abysmal -35s to +45s daily, the 6r15 is a bit better but still inadequate, IMHO. Don't get me wrong, I quite like Seikos and also own a few :) |
As if we couldn't tell :-)
In some ways the 7s26 and 4r36 are kind of nice, in that you can often find a position to rest your watch at night so that the daily gain is averages out to zero. But some people with a GS get +9s and can't do anything about it. (They actually promise -1 to +10 when cased, for 9S65. Kind of disappointing.)