Watch Update

Alas, I have called off my watch hunt due to the fact that there are no suitable watches on the market for me. I feel like the watch market is one area in consumer shopping where the choices men are vastly greater than the choices for women.

To be fair, I thought I did find the right watch for a brief period, but upon further research, realized that that particular kind was not the kind I was looking for.

Again, my main requirement is that it doesn't require a change of battery. There are 3 kinds of watches that satisfy this requirement--automatic mechanical, automatic quartz, and light powered. The automatic mechanical is a mechanical watch (no electronic parts) that winds itself via a pendulum that swings back and forth as you move. The automatic quartz is like a hybrid--it has a battery, but also a pendulum like that of a mechanical watch. The motion of the pendulum powers the battery, so you never have to change the battery. And lastly, light powered watches use light (any light -- sunlight, fluorescent, incandescent) to store energy that powers the watch.

The disadvantage about the automatic mechanical is that it's not very accurate, from what I read. Once you take it off your wrist, the watch slows down over a period of time. For example, it can lose as much as 10-20 seconds in one night. While this does not seem very significant, over time, it will accumulate. Thus, these kinds of watches are primary for watch collectors, who actually enjoy adjusting the time manually once in awhile. (They enjoy this "interaction".)

There are no major disadvantages in the automatic quartz and the light powered except that Seiko is the only company to make the automatic quartz (their Kinetic line) and they don't make it for women and Citizen is the only company to make light powered watches (their Eco-Drive line) and I didn't like any of the available styles.

Thus, I've come to a dead end. I would rather just change the battery on my old watch than get a watch whose style I don't like or a watch that requires me to change the battery.