The Downsides of Quartz Watches (What No One Tells You)

Quartz watches dominate the market. Over 90% of all watches sold worldwide run on quartz movement, and it is easy to see why. They are accurate, affordable, low-maintenance, and available at every price point. For most people buying a first watch, quartz is the obvious starting point.

But no technology is without trade-offs, and quartz is no exception. The more you learn about watchmaking, the more the limitations of quartz start to show. This is not an argument against quartz watches. There are excellent reasons to own one. It is an honest look at what you give up when you choose quartz, so you can make an informed decision rather than a default one.

1. Battery dependency

The most fundamental limitation of a quartz watch is that it needs a battery to function. Without it, the watch stops entirely. Most quartz batteries last between one and three years depending on the movement and complications involved, which means replacing them is an inevitable and recurring task.

For casual wearers this is a minor inconvenience. A jeweller or watch service centre can swap the battery in minutes for a few pounds or dollars. But there are real drawbacks worth understanding:

• Environmental impact: Watch batteries are small but they contain toxic materials including mercury, silver oxide and lithium. Millions are discarded every year.
• Failure without warning: Unlike a mechanical watch that gradually loses time as it runs down, a quartz watch often just stops dead. You may not notice until you are already late.
• Long-term ownership cost: Over a decade of ownership, battery replacements add up. They are cheap individually but they are a cost that mechanical and automatic watches simply do not have.
• The purist objection: For serious collectors and enthusiasts, relying on a disposable battery to power a timepiece feels fundamentally at odds with the craft of watchmaking. A mechanical watch is self-contained. A quartz watch is dependent on an external consumable.

Solar-powered quartz and kinetic movements partially address this by harvesting energy from light or motion, but they introduce their own trade-offs around storage capacity and degradation over time.

2. Less craftsmanship and mechanical complexity

A high-end mechanical watch movement can contain over 200 individual components, each hand-finished, assembled under magnification, and regulated by a skilled watchmaker. The escapement, the balance wheel, the mainspring: every part plays a precise mechanical role, and the relationship between them is what makes a great movement genuinely impressive to study.

A quartz movement, by contrast, is a circuit board, a battery, a quartz crystal, and a stepping motor. It works by sending an electrical charge through the crystal, which vibrates at exactly 32,768 times per second. A chip counts those vibrations and advances the hands once per second. It is an elegant piece of electronics engineering, but it is not watchmaking in the traditional sense.

This matters for several reasons:

• Collectibility: Watch collectors rarely pursue quartz movements. The conversation around horology covers the complications, the finishes, the watchmakers, and it is almost entirely focused on mechanical and automatic watches. Quartz is largely absent from that world.
• Repairability: A skilled watchmaker can rebuild a mechanical movement indefinitely. Quartz modules, once they fail, are typically replaced rather than repaired. The electronics degrade and are not designed for the kind of long-term servicing that keeps a mechanical watch running for generations.
• Emotional connection: This is subjective but it is real. Knowing that a watch contains a tiny engine, one that runs on nothing but a coiled spring and centuries of accumulated watchmaking knowledge, creates a different relationship with the object than knowing it runs on a battery and a circuit.

If you want to understand what mechanical complexity looks like on the wrist, our guide to the best rectangular watches covers movements across both quartz and automatic in the context of case design and wearing experience.

3. The tick and what it tells you

One of the most immediately noticeable characteristics of a quartz watch is the seconds hand. It moves in discrete one-second jumps driven by the stepping motor advancing the gear train once per second. On most quartz watches this is how you identify the movement at a glance.

On a mechanical or automatic watch, the seconds hand sweeps continuously, or near-continuously depending on the beat rate of the movement. A watch beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour produces a seconds hand that moves in tiny increments ten times per second, which to the naked eye looks like a smooth, flowing motion.

This distinction matters beyond aesthetics. The sweep of a mechanical seconds hand is a visible expression of the movement inside. It tells you that something is happening, that energy is being transferred, that gears are turning. The tick of a quartz hand tells you that a circuit fired. Both are accurate. Only one is interesting to watch.

High-beat quartz movements do exist that mimic the sweep of a mechanical hand, but they are rare and consume battery power faster. The standard quartz tick remains the norm across the vast majority of the market.

4. Value retention

Quartz watches depreciate. With very few exceptions, a quartz watch bought new will be worth significantly less within a few years, and the decline continues from there. This is not universally true across all categories: a vintage Rolex Oysterquartz or a Patek Philippe quartz from the 1970s can command serious money at auction. But those are exceptions driven by brand heritage and historical context, not by the quartz movement itself.

The reasons quartz depreciates faster than mechanical are structural:

• Mass production: Quartz movements are manufactured at enormous scale. There is no scarcity, and scarcity is one of the primary drivers of long-term value in watches.
• Replaceability: Because quartz movements are modular and interchangeable, there is little motivation to maintain an original. The watch can be kept running cheaply but it loses its originality in the process.
• Collector indifference: The secondary market for watches is driven by collectors, and collectors largely ignore quartz. Auction houses, watch fairs, and serious dealers focus almost exclusively on mechanical pieces.
• Technology aging: Electronics age in a way that mechanical parts do not. A movement from the 1960s can be serviced and regulated to perform as well as it did when new. Electronics from the same era are obsolete.

If you are buying a watch as an investment or as something to pass down, a mechanical movement is almost always the stronger choice. For more on how to think about value at different price points, see our guide to the best watches under 1000.

5. Limited lifespan of the electronics

Quartz movements are robust in the short to medium term. They handle shocks, temperature changes, and daily wear well. But over the long term, the electronics inside a quartz watch degrade in ways that mechanical components do not.

The integrated circuit at the heart of a quartz movement has a finite operational life. Capacitors dry out. Coils corrode. The crystal itself, while extremely stable, can drift slightly over decades. Some high-end quartz movements are designed with serviceability in mind, but the majority of the market produces quartz watches that are effectively disposable once the electronics fail.

A mechanical watch, by contrast, is a collection of metal parts. With proper servicing every five to ten years, a good mechanical movement can run indefinitely. Watchmakers have kept movements from the 18th and 19th centuries running accurately. No quartz watch from the 1970s is still running on its original electronics.

This is one of the most underappreciated differences between the two technologies. Quartz wins on short-term accuracy and reliability. Mechanical wins on longevity. If you want a watch that could outlive you, the answer is almost never quartz.

6. The soul argument

This one is harder to quantify but it comes up in every serious conversation about quartz versus mechanical, so it deserves a direct answer.

Watch enthusiasts talk about mechanical watches having soul. It sounds like marketing language but it points at something real. A mechanical watch is a machine that you can see working. Through a display caseback you can watch the rotor spin, the escapement release, the balance wheel oscillate back and forth six or eight times per second. It is a kinetic sculpture that happens to tell the time.

A quartz watch does none of this. The movement is sealed, static, and silent. There is nothing to observe and nothing to maintain. You set it and forget it, which is genuinely useful but also the source of the disconnect that enthusiasts describe. The relationship between owner and object is transactional rather than engaged.

This is not a reason to dismiss quartz. For someone who wants a reliable, accurate, low-maintenance watch that does not require attention, quartz is the rational choice. But if you want a watch that rewards curiosity and involvement, quartz will eventually leave you cold.

7. Fewer complications worth wearing

Complications, in watchmaking, refer to any function beyond basic timekeeping. A date window is a complication. A chronograph is a complication. A moon phase, a power reserve indicator, a tourbillon: all complications. In mechanical watchmaking, complications are the primary vehicle for demonstrating skill, and the most complicated mechanical watches are among the most celebrated objects in the world.

Quartz can replicate many of these functions electronically, and it often does so more accurately and cheaply than a mechanical equivalent. A quartz chronograph is more precise than a mechanical one. A quartz perpetual calendar requires no adjustment for decades. On a functional level, quartz complications often win.

But they are not interesting in the same way. A mechanical chronograph works through a column wheel, a vertical clutch, levers and springs all interacting in real time when you press the pusher. The quartz equivalent fires a circuit. Both measure elapsed time. Only one has anything worth looking at.

For buyers who want the visual language of a complicated watch without the cost of a mechanical movement, quartz fills the gap. But for buyers who want to understand what they are wearing, quartz complications are a closed book. To explore how complications play out in rectangular case design specifically, see our guide to the best rectangular watches.

8. The trend is moving away from quartz

Consumer sentiment around quartz has shifted noticeably over the past decade. Younger buyers, particularly those in their twenties and thirties, are increasingly drawn to mechanical and automatic watches despite the higher price and maintenance requirements. The resurgence of vintage watch collecting, the growth of independent watchmakers, and the broader cultural interest in craft and provenance have all contributed to this shift.

This does not mean quartz is disappearing. It will remain dominant by volume for the foreseeable future. But it does mean that quartz is increasingly associated with the entry level and the purely functional, while mechanical and automatic watches occupy the space where design, heritage, and meaning intersect.

At Söner, we make watches in both quartz and automatic. Our quartz models offer the same considered rectangular case design and Swedish minimalist aesthetic as our automatic pieces, with the added accessibility of quartz reliability and pricing. But we are honest about the difference. If you want a watch that grows in meaning over time, that rewards attention and care, and that has a realistic chance of outlasting you, our guide to automatic watches is worth reading before you decide.

So should you buy a quartz watch?

Quartz is not a bad choice. It is often the right choice. If you need a reliable everyday watch, if budget is the primary constraint, if you want accuracy without maintenance, or if you are buying a watch for a specific practical purpose, quartz serves all of those needs well.

The downsides outlined above matter most to buyers who are thinking long-term. Buyers who want a watch that appreciates rather than depreciates. Buyers who want to own something with mechanical depth and a connection to the history of watchmaking. Buyers who want to pass something of value to the next generation.

For those buyers, quartz is a starting point rather than a destination. It is where most people begin, and it is perfectly valid to stay there. But knowing what you are trading away is the difference between a default purchase and an informed one.

If you are ready to explore what the alternative looks like, see our full collection of rectangular watches and our breakdown of what makes a watch worth the investment.