HAQ’s are, thus, thermo-compensated and can detect these changes and adjust themselves accordingly, which typically results in a guaranteed accuracy rate of around 10 seconds per year. HAQ’s still operate under the same principals as standard quartz movements, but they take into account the one major threat to quartz accuracy: changes in temperature. This is still much better than even the best mechanical watches, but there’s a breed of quartz watches out there that can do even better: the High Accuracy Quartz (HAQ). Most watches rocking a quartz movement are guaranteed accurate to around 15 seconds a month or so. This impulse drives a motor, in turn moving the seconds hand and giving the quartz watch its signature once-per-second tick. The watch movement’s microchip circuit then reduces this frequency into one electric pulse per second. The inverse of this property is also true, in that when an electric current is passed through quartz, it vibrates, usually 32,768 times per second. Quartz naturally vibrates at a precise frequency and also has piezoelectric properties, meaning that when pressure is exerted upon it, it produces a small volt of electricity. On a quartz watch, however, there’s a tiny quartz crystal, cut out in the shape of a tuning fork. How Does a Quartz Watch Work?Īny clock needs an oscillating, regulating element to keep accurate time on a mechanical watch, this takes the form of a balance spring and balance wheel. In short, it’s far from an old, simple and soulless technology - it continues to evolve. Other watchmakers have been able to incorporate atomic timekeeping into their quartz timepieces and smartphone connectivity as well, making a watch that is super-accurate to begin with even more accurate. "Hybrid" smartwatches, for example, use quartz as a base for analog timekeeping, then add on other elements like step trackers and heart rate monitors. Once you dig under the hood a little and understand how the technology works, however, it becomes utterly fascinating - and many a watch snob has come to realize that a cheap, quartz-regulated watch isn’t so bad after all.īetter yet, quartz technology is incredibly simple and can be scaled down and augmented with other electronics and smart functions. Forget that they’re more affordable than mechanical watches. Forget that it’s more accurate than even the most expensive, most expertly-tuned mechanical timepieces. Utilizing this methodology for timekeeping was apparently unforgivable to some, hence quartz’s four-letter-word status amongst many watch enthusiasts.īut never mind that a quartz watch, save for the occasional battery change, requires much less servicing than its mechanical counterpart. Ushering in what’s called either the Quartz Crisis or the Quartz Revolution (depending on your feelings on the technology), quartz quickly proved that the most reliable, most accurate way to tell time was not with an intricate network of gears, but with a small crystal, a battery and some tiny motors. Before it became ubiquitous and before it became the subject of many a watch enthusiast’s ire, quartz was once upon a time a cutting-edge technology that nearly upended an entire industry of watchmaking.