Hacker News Reader

Comment by piskov | Hacker News Reader

That’s why I eventually settled with gshock that has solar charging and syncs time twice a day with radio towers (or bluetooth if you are somewhere in the world where there is no time radio signal)

Even rolex needs time setting, servicing to lube and clean metal parts, etc.

Gshock on the other hand will work for 10-15 years without a single manual time adjustment or battery swap needed.

Absolute unit.

This gold metal square one I especially love for summer:

https://www.casio.com/content/dam/casio/product-info/locales...

View on HN

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.

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 :-)

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.

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

Those are not as good as they seem to be. I once had a g-shock mudmaster, seemingly an absolutely overbuilt thing, and it was resetting randomly in wet conditions. Maybe that could be fixed on warranty and it would work next 50 years flawlessly, but it didn’t inspire any confidence in that brand. They re-positioned themselves as a loud fashion brand, not a tool watch manufacturer.

I can’t say nothing about gshocks that have moving parts (actual hands) and what have you

Gshock metal square (like the photo I referenced) never failed on me (and I have 3 of those in different colors: gold and silver lcd ones, and black memory in pixel new one)

In Japan they sell the Waveceptor brand Casio watches. I got a nice simple titanium (case back and strap) with solar, LCD alarms and radio control for around $200. It even auto re-centers the hands if they are exposed to strong magnets. You can also get these on eBay and Amazon though 3rd sellers.

bluetooth on watch sounds disturbing

You absolutely can skip setting this up

Though even if you consider any possible harmfull effects like thyroid nodules formation correlation [1] (people somehow only think about ionizing radiation, but there much more that happens in a cell that can be possibly disrupted without xray level stuff to damage dna or heat: there are ion channels and what have you), the Bluetooth on gshock — if set up — will work only for a few seconds twice a day. Basically nothing even if you sleep directly on it all night long

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-63653-0

I'm fairly certain they were concerned about privacy, not... any of that. Bluetooth is promiscuous in an already noisy band.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com