Quartz wristwatch accuracy
I have a quartz watch that I set in 2018 and just reset today, after 2 years of drift.
date | drift | days since set |
---|---|---|
2018-12-02 | +0 seconds | 0 |
2019-01-04 | +10 seconds | 33 (+0.3sec/day) |
2019-02-02 | +17 seconds | 62 (+0.3sec/day) |
2019-10-15 | +111 seconds | 307 (+0.4sec/day) |
2020-10-18 | +256 seconds | 686 (+0.4sec/day) |
So it runs less than half a second fast per day. That seems pretty good.
Running 0.4 seconds per day fast means
- in a week, it’ll be 3 seconds fast
- in a month, it’ll be 12 seconds fast
- every year, it’ll run over 2 minutes fast
Not super bad, but if you set your watch on 1 January, you shouldn’t expect to hit New Year’s anywhere but between 11:55p and 12:05a the following year.
I generally want things to be within 30 seconds, 15 really.
That means with a watch like this, I should reset it every month or two. Just something to think about.