[amiga386]

So you can understand why the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_crisis had Swiss watchmakers fearing for their industry. Mechanical watches couldn't hope to compete with electronics on accuracy. Hence their pivot to understanding that watches are jewellery. Fancy, complicated jewellery with moving parts, but jewellery, and priced based on style and cachet, rather than on function.

[piskov]

There is innovation in mechanical, no doubt, eg seiko spring drive which is a spectacular feat; stuff like new synthetic lubes or silicon balance springs to counteract magnets (which are everywhere now: from the back of the phone to the rim of a macbook).

So mechanical watch can be pretty accurate (very much so, if you buy one without a seconds hand).

Ultimately, it is a combination of inaccuracy, servicing at least once every 5-7 years, not so great running time (if you have many watches), etc. that turned my obsessive-compulsive gaze away from them (after I manually regulated with a timegrapher my Raketa Big zero to be accurate around to +3 seconds per day if I wear it constantly, which was fun akin to bonsai or what have you).

The only thing I would have wanted from gshock is having more apocalypse-level accuracy (if there is no time signal available): like having a built-in offsets to account for temperature-based quartz fluctuations.

That and a battery inside that can last a century of solar charge — so it can be an ultimate tool :-)

[annzabelle]

What's the drift like on a G Shock with no time signal available? There isn't a time signal in my region.

I've been considering getting a second watch (on top of my Coros running watch) because my phone has bad time drift when in battery saver + airplane mode, and my watch has a habit of dying at the wrong moment because of GPS and sleep tracking power drain.

That doesn't sound like it would be a problem, but I am in the habit of 5+ day hikes with no cell service and the occasional 40 hour flight with 3 layovers each in a different time zone.

[piskov]

If unable to sync (even via bluetooth), these models are rated for +/- 15 seconds of drift per month.