Quartz watches are having a movement

WRISTWATCH enthusiasts can be persnickety. They often have strong opinions about whether bezels should be bidirectional. They can cite the differences between ETA and Sellita movements. They will happily preach the gospel of microadjust clasps and guilloche dials.

And for years – decades, really – they formed a fairly unified front when it came to their contempt for quartz watches. Unlike mechanical timepieces, which are like Rube Goldberg machines in miniature, quartz watches are essentially powered by an electronic circuit. To purists, this felt like cheating.

“There was this idea that quartz was somehow diametrically opposed to the nobility of mechanical Swiss watchmaking,” said Andrew McUtchen, founder of Time & Tide Watches, an online publication based in Australia. “But time has healed some of those wounds – pardon the pun.”