By far the most intricate quartz watch from Switzerland that I am aware of is the Tissot T-Touch:

Tissot T-Tactile T-Touch Screen Men’s Watch Stainless Steel Black Dial T33158851

…and that’s just a gimmicky gadget more for computer nerds rather than those serious about quality watches.

The further you go up in the price spectrum, the worse it becomes I’m afraid.

Take for example the Breitling Aerospace Advantage (which is Swiss for all you watch idiots out there):

Breitling Aerospace Avantage Digital Mens Watch E7936210/M513

This watch is pretty expensive, but on the plus side it is a quartz watch that can track a second time zone, has a countdown timer, has an alarm, and also has a a chronograph.

That’s all good stuff, but wait!!!

This Citizen watch (which is of course Japanese), has got pretty much all that same stuff too:

Citizen Jy0010-50e Eco Drive Mens Watch

On top of that it can track the time in 43 world cities, is solar powered, syncs up with an atomic clock for infinitely precise time, and it’s got a perpetual calendar to boot.  Zounds!

Did I also mention that this, even factoring in any discounts likely to be had with the Breitling, costs $2,000 less as well?

Well if you’ve ever compared Japanese cars against European cars, I’m sure this won’t come as any surprise, but this is yet another arena in which the Japanese have got the Europeans finger licked.

The Japanese quartz watches being offered by companies like Citizen, Seiko, and Casio, offer much better value than anything the Swiss could hope for, and besides that, whereas the Swiss still struggle with basic multifunction quartz watches, the Japanese offer quartz watches that operate with solar power (or kinetic power), sync up with atomic clocks, and offer complex functions such as a perpetual calendar and minute repeater.

In other words, they are light years ahead, and when it comes to mechanical movements they have not only made mechanical watches with better value, but they have meshed old mechanical watch technology with all the benefits of quartz-watch accuracy as well.

Sure there are many good Swiss quartz movements out there in the entry-level watches you’d find out of Tag Heuer, Omega, and Rolex (made by ETA no less), but besides keeping just the basic functionality of time and date, and maybe  a chronograph, they don’t do squat.

And for me, it is seriously difficult to find a single Swiss, quartz-powered watch that goes beyond the same boring functionality that I had in my digital watches 20 years ago.

Quite frankly, when it comes to the quartz watch, I can’t entirely blame them.  I mean the Japanese did invent the quartz watch so they must be better with the stuff, and with so many people eating up the old school mechanical incarnations of the Swiss, why even bother?

I say let the Japanese do what they do best, and let the Swiss do what they do best!

This is a little known fact, but if you walk into any given store that sells luxury wristwatches, it is a virtual guarantee that MOST of the watches there are NOT powered by their own movements.

What?!?

That’s right!  Your shiny new Breitling and your indestructible Omega have movements in them (or “engines” for the layperson) that are NOT made by them.

But don’t fret, they’re not the only ones…

Brands that you have learned to love such as IWC, Rado, Porsche Design, Panerai, Tag Heuer, and even my beloved Hamilton, you’ll be shocked to learn, do not function under their own steam.  Virtually all of them, and I do mean ALL of them, use some form of ETA movement in their watches.

You may not have heard of the name, but ETA is the legendary Swiss movements manufacturer whose constant supply of blank watch movements have made it possible for the Swiss watch industry to exist.

I’m not kidding either, ETA is pretty much the entire Swiss watch industry, and if it were to disappear from the Earth the very next day, the whole of the Swiss watch industry would cease to exist.

It would actually be infinitely easier for me to name all the watch “manufacturers” that DO make their own movements as opposed to those who rely solely on ETA for theirs.

(Here we go:  Rolex, Zenith, Patek Philippe, and maybe a few others…)

Here is one of ETA’s movements which you can see through the back of my beautiful Hamilton:

Hamilton H64455533 Men’s Khaki King Automatic Black Dial Strap, Free Shipping

So how does it work?

Well basically ETA ships off blank, unused movements to pretty much all the Swiss watch companies for use in their watches.  The movements are then modified and fitted into various watches.  In some cases they are very heavily modified, such as the case with Omega’s co-axial movement.  After that is done, the watch companies etch their name and logos all over the movement and ship ‘em off to the consumers, who are none the wiser.

Notice any similarities between these these three watches?

Breitling Chrono Cockpit – A1335812/C654-SP Gents Watch


Omega Speedmaster Date Chronograph Automatic Men’s Watch Stainless Steel Black Dial 3210.52

TAG Heuer Men’s Link Automatic Chronograph Watch #CJF2150.BB0595

These watches may be made by three entirely different watch companies that embody three different design characteristics, but the under-workings are exactly the same.

You’ll notice that the date window is at the 3 o’clock positions, and you’ll notice that the seconds hand is at the 9 o’ clock position sub-dial.  You operate the chronograph by pushing the pusher at the 2 o’clock position, and you reset it with the pusher at the 4 o’clock position.  Yes the workings of these watches are very similar indeed…

Coincidence?

I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out my point here, and that is that the three different watches from three very different, and well known watch companies, are based off the same chronograph movement, and yup, you guessed it…

… it’s an ETA movement!

One thing I’m doing that is very wrong, and I admit, is that I’m talking about all of this as though it were a bad thing.  But it’s not!

There’s a very good reason why the whole of Switzerland turns to ETA for their movements.  Besides the fact that it’s much easier, cheaper for you and the manufacturer, and lazier that way, ETA makes outstanding movements that is better than what most of the “watchmakers” in Switzerland can ever come up with.

They aren’t very pretty to look at, and they aren’t “handmade” or “in-house” as the watch connoisseurs like to obsess about, but they work very very well, and when it comes to building high-quality, albeit simple movements, ETA is the best in the business.

I personally don’t get it when people obsess about things being “hand made.”  It is my personal preference to have something, especially something as small as a watch, made with the microscopic precision and unwavering nature of a machine rather than the fat fingers of a fondue eating, mountain dwelling goat tender.

Rantings aside,  the bottom line is that what you probably didn’t know about many of the fine watch brands you’ve been drooling about, you now know.  But don’t let that be a deterrent.  If anything, let that be an assurance that what you are buying has got one solid movement.

My favorite television show is a show that I can’t even watch here in the United States, but even so, I am a HUGE fan of Top Gear, which is a very popular British car program on BBC2. I even hear that presenter James May is a bit of a watch collector, and whenever I should happen to him on the program he always seems to be wearing something different.

Now that the 11th Series of Top Gear is well underway I’m glad to say that one of Breitling’s most notable watches was casually referenced in a recent episode when presenter Jeremy Clarkson was talking about “cocks.” To Americans like me it wasn’t immediately obvious what a “cock” was, but just by context you can eventually figure out that a “cock” is the British equivalent of an American yuppie, but only without any age limit.  In addition, a cock is also apparently a basically a business idiot who doesn’t think for themselves and drive around in cars made by Audi or Aston Martin (or BMW). It was also noted that cocks wore those “stupid Breitling” watches with a button you press that makes the “helicopter” come.  As Jeremy was making his point it just so happened that a member of the audience had one on at which he asked about the helicopter that would be arriving.

Whatever could they be talking about?

The Breitling Emergency of course:

NEW BREITLING PROFESSIONAL EMERGENCY MENS WATCH E7632110/C549

This is one of the most unique and arguably the most significant Breitling watch out there today. It’s not terribly common as far as i can tell, but this is the only watch that I know of that requires you to sign an agreement to pay rescue costs should you misuse the distress signal that calls out the National Guard to come rescue you if anything should happen.

You see the aptly-named Breitling Emergency has a radio transmitter that was originally designed as an emergency distress beacon for civilian pilots should they crash and get lost at sea. They operate by sending out a signal on a specific distress frequency and can transmit such a signal for almost 100 miles. It was actually noted that some people in Antarctica crashed in Antarctica and were rescued after rescuers honed in on the emergency signal transmitted from their Breitling Emergency watches.

Obviously this kind of largely useless technology is appealing to the posers out there who like to brag to their friends that their watches can make helicopters appear out of mid-air, but to me, this watch is a largely a novelty whose emergency safety net will likely never even come close to having to be used by the vast majority of those who buy it.

Of course should I happen to be stuck in the middle of Antarctica with no ways of communicating to anyone but the local wildlife than I’m sure I would think differently.

BMW’s are driven almost exclusively by alpha males. I’m not talking about those teenybopper 3 series that all the rich kids drive, I’m talking about those big ugly 5 and 7 Series computers-on-wheels that all the alphas drive. I’m sure you know the type. They are the type of man who doesn’t care about the fact that their cars are as ugly as a baboon’s behind, they are the type of man who doesn’t care about the environment, and most important of all, they are the type of man who couldn’t care less about what other people think.

These men are cutting edge indeed. They love their big expensive BMW’s and all the stuff in it. Their ability to control the hardness of their suspensions is the 21st century equivalent of a gorilla beating on its hairy chest. Half the stuff in their cars they don’t need, but they love that it’s there; And when an alpha male shows that stuff off, it makes all us inferior males want to crawl back in the jungle in the hopes of mating with one of the females the alphas didn’t want.

These men are the pack leaders, they are the focused, they are the Illuminati, they are the men that all the women want to sleep with, and these are the men that all men aspire to be.

The watch of an alpha male? A Breitling of Course!

Breitling Breitling for Bentley Mens Watch A2536212/B686-970A

One of Breitling’s most famous models was called the Breitling Emergency, and like no other watch before it, it transmitted a distress signal to neighboring vessels should its wearer ever be lost at sea. (yes, that ought to do the alphas quite nicely) But since that’s no longer widely available I think they will be quite satisfied with this Breitling Bentley Motors T.

Despite the irony of it being named and made for those self-conscious Bentley drivers, the alphas will gladly have it, because while wearing a watch like that is literally like hanging one’s balls out in the open, the alphas have got the stuffing in the pants to back it up. And would you just look at the thing, it is SENSATIONALLY beautiful.

There are more numbers on the dial than in all the math books ever made, there are more hands on it than on a statue of Ganesha, and it is so complicated that one would need a computer programming degree just to operate one. I’m sad to say that your humble presenter is not worthy of this watch, but if you are one of the enlightened, one of the cutting edge, and one of the worthy, you will love this watch.