Do You Really Need a Highly Accurate Watch?

New York Times

2 days ago

Sixty years ago, before the advent of cheap and accurate Japanese-made quartz timepieces all but decimated the Swiss watch industry, mechanical wristwatches had one overriding purpose: to keep time with unwavering accuracy.
'But in the modern age, or what we call the mechanical renaissance and thereafter, precision hasn't been a huge subject,' said Elizabeth Doerr, a watch journalist in Karlsruhe, Germany. 'Mechanical watches are precise enough for most of us. If you want more precision, then you have to have a quartz watch.'
Try telling that to Rolex. The watchmaker — which in 2024 had estimated sales of 10.6 billion Swiss francs ($12.9 billion), or almost a third of all Swiss watch sales — is now at the forefront of an industrywide effort to ensure that precision-focused mechanical timepieces maintain their relevance in a world that doesn't actually need them.
On April 1, at the Watches and Wonders Geneva trade fair, the brand introduced its first new model in 13 years. Known as the Land-Dweller, the watch was the talk of the town (at least before President Trump's tariff announcement the next day usurped the conversation).
While many commenters focused on the watch's slim styling and integrated bracelet, watch insiders devoted the lion's share of attention to the Land-Dweller's entirely new mechanical movement. Specifically, on what many people at the fair and around the trade called its game-changing Dynapulse escapement (the term refers to the mechanical watch mechanism that controls the release of energy from the mainspring to the hands).
Widely hailed as more energy efficient and shock resistant and therefore more robust and longer-lasting than existing escapements — such as the traditional Swiss lever escapement, which for more than two centuries has served as the industry standard — the Dynapulse gave technically inclined fans of watchmaking plenty to admire.
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