What sort of accuracy should I expect?

[chris333]

Having had quartz watches right from my first LED watch in 1977, I'm a rather late convert to the joys of "proper" watches.

One day, I'll splash out on something really decent, but in the meantime, I've picked up a £50 Parnis watch off ebay.

Now I've had it for a couple of weeks, the timekeeping seems to have settled down to being about 10-15s fast per day (compared to my radio controlled watch. This seems pretty good to me.

Is this the sort of accuracy to be expected from a pretty cheap watch? How does that compare to something from a reputable swiss maker?

[LukeBird]

That's reasonable for one of those (in fact, that's pretty damn good). A well regulated movement can be as good as a quartz really.

[sparkyhx]

thats acceptable - they can be regulated to be more accurate. My Parnis is certainly sub 10 seconds per day.

I have just bought a Tao International (£50) and astonishingly its 1 second out after 3 weeks

[chris333]

Thanks for the replies In fact, since I set it on Sunday, it gained about 15s in the first day and since then it has only been about 1s per day.

Do mechanical watches have a running in period like cars?

[CardShark]

They will settle after a while, they can also vary slightly dependant on their position eg on the wrist, laying on it's side, on it's back etc. Sounds like you've got a good one there!