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.