The silicon hairspring is what separates the Silicium versions from the standard ones. Until about a decade ago, a Swiss automatic under a thousand dollars ran for roughly forty hours off the wrist. Take it off on Friday evening and it had stopped by Sunday. The Powermatic 80 doubled that. Eighty hours means a watch […]

Three point six millimetres thick, and that is the whole point. There are two ETA automatics that matter above all others. The 2824 is the workhorse. The 2892-A2 is the good one. It is thinner, finished to a higher standard, and it is the base a very large part of the Swiss industry uses when

Designed in 1973 and still the default mechanical chronograph. If you own a mechanical chronograph that did not cost as much as a car, you almost certainly own a 7750 or something derived from it. It was designed in 1973, survived the quartz crisis that killed most of its contemporaries, and became the default answer

In production since 1977 and still going. The Miyota 8215 is probably the reason you can buy an automatic watch for under a hundred dollars. It is made by Miyota, which belongs to Citizen, and it has been in continuous production since 1977. Almost half a century of the same design has driven the cost

The movement inside most Seiko 5 Sports and many Prospex divers. For years the cheapest way into a real mechanical watch had an irritating catch. Seiko’s entry automatics could not be wound by hand and could not be stopped to set the time precisely. The 4R36 fixed both. It arrived around 2011 to replace the

The most common Swiss automatic you have never heard of. Open the caseback of almost any Swiss automatic between five hundred and three thousand dollars and there is a good chance you are looking at a Sellita. The brand rarely appears on the dial. It sells movements to other watch companies, which is why it