Watch types explained

Real men know their art, their craft, and their passion. The Mona Lisa is awesome, but a great watch can change your life. With our Watches 101, we would like to raise your level of nerdy watch knowledge, starting with the types here and the styles later.

That we love watches, that is clear if you’ve been following us on Instagram or here on our website. Hell, we sell nato straps, so of course, we do. If you are into watches, which every self-respecting guy is, then you have a particular opinion about which one you like. And which one you don’t like. Which one suits you and which one is far away from your style.

Did you know, however, that there are a whole dictionary and terminology behind the world of watches? Types, style, parts, pieces, ways to wear and more. It’s massive! In this article and our Watches 101 series, we would like to raise your level of nerdy knowledge about watches. We know the series will grow your love for the most beautiful kind of art in the world. The art you are wearing on your wrist.

Quartz Versus Mechanical Watches

The first main distinction is between Quartz Watches and Mechanical Watches. You know this one and also know how heavy and emotionally loaded most men are when it comes to owning one or the other.

Quartz watches are actually the most accurate and most loved watches in the world. They are very affordable and therefore worn most by the mainstream. The Quartz watches can be divided into Battery, Kinetic or Solar powered.

Battery powered watches

The battery-powered watches get their energy from a battery that makes the quartz crystal inside vibrate at a specific rate per second. There is a little computer chip inside of the watch that counts the vibrations and transfers the information to either the LCD display or for most quartz watches to an analog style display.

The great things about a quartz watch, in general, is that it doesn’t move at all on the inside. Or at least, you can’t feel it. There are quite some pretty ones out there, we ourselves own a Fromanteel Generations Quartz watch. Swiss made, Dutch design. It’s a dress watch, which we will cover in part 2 of Watch Styles & Types. We like the minimal design of the dress watch, especially with our grey nato watch strap.    

Kinetic Powered watches

Then there is the Kinetic watch, which uses an different power source, the motion of the wearer. If was originally introduced by the Japanese brand Seiko. Almost everybody knows Seiko, they have such big brand awareness.

The movement of the arm generates the power here to vibrate the quartz crystal. Within the watch, there is a capacitor that is being charged and can keep the watch charged for at least two weeks, or some even up to half a year.

Years ago (we’ll share that story one day) we bought a Seiko Kinetic that can run for 6 months. It’s the Seiko Kinetic Titanium from 2010, super light. We’ll post a picture of it here ones we get back home after the 2,5 years of travel. We love it and the story behind buying it is quite emotional actually.

Solar powered watches

Now, the last in the category of Quartz watch is the Solar Powered Watch. Obviously, they are solar powered. In this case, the capacitor is charged by sunlight. It can keep the watch going for 72 hours. We hardly see these in real life, do you have one you love? Send us a picture to be featured here.

Mechanical Watches

This is where our big love comes in, mechanical watches. The oldest way of making watches, after putting a stick in the ground using sunlight to tell the time of course.

These watches are fine pieces of art if you ask us. Especially Swiss made mechanical watches make us drool. They are a real craft and come either with manual winding or automatic winding.  

Manual winding

Here, no batteries, no quartz crystals, nothing. You wind up the internal mechanism with a spring yourself and have to do that every several days. We never owned one, but it’s on the want list. Isn’t it romantic that you have to wind your watch yourself?

Automatic winding

An automatic watch is powered by the movement of your wrist or a watch winder. The watches have a weight inside that spins around and slowly winds up the mechanism inside. The mechanism on average keeps the watch running for 48 hours, so you do have to wear it more regularly.

Last year we got our hands on a watch we believe is extremely pretty, well, you see it pass by on our Instagram a lot. The Tudor Black Bay Heritage Black. It’s an automatic diver and they say it has a power reserve of 70 hours. We actually never paid attention to it or measure it.

Here a picture of our pride and follow us on Instagram to see more of it. We always wear our Tudor with our Nato straps, obviously. We think it looks great with the black nato strap and the blue nato strap. One way or the other the grey watch strap doesn’t work that well, but that’s just an opinion. What do you think?

On our Instagram, you, of course, see a lot of watches, not only the ones we own. So follow us and spot a Golden Omega Speedmaster with our Black Nato Strap. Nobody knows what this watch is exactly worth, but damn it’s pretty.

Next time in part 2 of Watch Types and Styles we will dive into the styles specifically of watches and explain more about the dress watch, the diver watch and other styles you have to know about.

So come back later and check it out!