Accuracy is something enthusiasts laud in mechanical watches but is ultimately irrelevant. After all, no one really buys a watch because it’s accurate — for all intents and purposes, your microwave tells better time than a Rolex.
But that Rolex isn’t just a highly accurate watch — it’s remarkably accurate. Modern Rolexes, which are certified chronometers, only gain or lose only two seconds per day when properly functioning and they are, as a result, some of the most accurate mechanical watches money can buy.
Different degrees of accuracy
But a Rolex or any other mechanical chronometer is easily dusted by a garden variety quartz watch, which usually gains or loses around 15 seconds a month. And even within the realm of quartz watches, there’s another sub-category able to outperform the rest: the High Accuracy Quartz (HAQ) watch, which loses and gains seconds not daily, not monthly, but yearly.
There are not many HAQ watches out on the market, and you’re probably familiar with some, like the Grand Seiko 9F, the Longines VHP and Breitling’s SuperQuartz — but you’ve likely never heard of the Citizen Chronomaster, one of the most accurate of the already insanely accurate HAQ’s out there.
There’s a good reason for this lack of familiarity: like many of Japan’s most interesting offerings, the Chronomaster was never designed for the US market. While the Chronomaster name dates to the 1960s, when it was introduced as a mechanical timepiece, the modern quartz Chronomaster was introduced in 1995 as simply “The Citizen.”
It featured Citizen’s then top-end thermo-compensated quartz movement (changes in temperature being the enemy to quartz accuracy) and was rated accurate to +/- five seconds a year, making it one of, if not the most accurate analog watches available at the time. For reference, the high-end Seiko 9F which came out around the same time was rated accurate to within 10 seconds a year.
