[bamakhrama]

A mechanical watch owner here: One very important thing to keep in mind is that a mechanical watch needs to be worn always in order to avoid having a winder or the gears losing their accuracy. Therefore, I opted for a "field" automatic watch: Seiko SNZG15J1. Field automatic watches are meant to be worn all the time. The SNZG15 has the Seiko 7S36 caliber which doesn't allow hacking or manual winding. But both features are not really necessary if you wear the watch all the time and willing to accept < 60 seconds worst case difference with atomic time.

[waddaleche]

I am sorry, but this is utter nonsense. First of all, you are talking about automatic (mechanical) watches. Manually wound mechanical watches don't need a winder at all. Watch winders make sense only if you are bothered by setting your watches again before wearing them (which I find a very satisfying experience, personally) or if you have a very complicated watch where setting the date, day, moonphase etc would be more involved than for a pure time/date watch.

Secondly - and most importantly - the "gears" don't lose accuracy if you don't wear the watch. Back in the days before synthetic oils, one was meant to keep the watch running to have the oils retain viscosity. Luckily, that is not the case for a long time anymore.

It is actually quite the opposite nowadays: the more the watch runs, the greater the chance that the watch accumulates wear! Although with modern watches of at least decent quality, this is not really an issue.

I own ~20 watches, which I alternate through regularly and not a single one of them has - or needs - a winder.

[zthrowaway]

This. Mechanical watches are happiest when continually running. If you take it off all the time and throw it back on once in a while, and it keeps shutting down in the process, it's not going to last as long as you think without some servicing. This is why people buy watch winders for the ones they don't wear often that keep them running.