Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. So basically this is normal and I’ll need to check my watch against time.gov every few weeks to make sure it’s not wildly fast or slow (like it is now at 4 minutes slow) and reset the time as needed?
Why wait that long? I was as surprised as you to find out these watches aren’t actually “great” at keeping time. You’d expect set it and forget it, right? People also say things like “this is part of your relationship with your watch” which mean you know it mechanically and you build habits around keeping time. Every other day I lost about a minute so every other day I reset it. I simply coordinate it with the time on my iPhone but whatever you choose is great. They say this is just part of the hobby…
I usually just keep an eye on my auto watches compared to my cell phone (which is automatically coordinated to atomic time, so it’s just as accurate as time.gov). If I notice it’s more than a minute or two off, I adjust it.
If being accurate to the second is necessary for you, a radio-corrected or High Accuracy Quartz would be a good choice. Even the most accurate automatic watches will be off by a minute or two per month.
![[Question] Is it normal for a watch to run 4 minutes slow? Seiko GMT](https://alien.top/pictrs/image/719e9ce0-71a3-45b0-ad4c-c5213a686048.webp){kind=link}
Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. So basically this is normal and I’ll need to check my watch against time.gov every few weeks to make sure it’s not wildly fast or slow (like it is now at 4 minutes slow) and reset the time as needed?
Why wait that long? I was as surprised as you to find out these watches aren’t actually “great” at keeping time. You’d expect set it and forget it, right? People also say things like “this is part of your relationship with your watch” which mean you know it mechanically and you build habits around keeping time. Every other day I lost about a minute so every other day I reset it. I simply coordinate it with the time on my iPhone but whatever you choose is great. They say this is just part of the hobby…
Mine runs fast so every week I’ll pull the crown out to hack the second hand and wait until it’s 15 sec slow and then resume
Actually, “set it and forget it” is pretty much only said about quartz watches.
I usually just keep an eye on my auto watches compared to my cell phone (which is automatically coordinated to atomic time, so it’s just as accurate as time.gov). If I notice it’s more than a minute or two off, I adjust it.
If being accurate to the second is necessary for you, a radio-corrected or High Accuracy Quartz would be a good choice. Even the most accurate automatic watches will be off by a minute or two per month.