The best automatic watches for men answer a whole lot of questions. See, you may find your way into watches through history, movies, or via the horological one-upmanship playing out in the world around you
horological one-upmanship playing out in the world around you, but however you acquire your love of timepieces, at some point you’re probably going to wonder what, exactly, makes them tick. The answer, nine times out of ten (at least where luxury watches are concerned), is an automatic movement.
While the precise makeup of a watch’s tiny gears, springs, and myriad other components quickly descends into advanced levels of nerdery (we’ll save the conversation on escapement design and guilloché finishing for another day), you don’t need a degree from MIT to appreciate the basic principles behind automatic watches. And while you definitely don’t need to know how your watch works to enjoy wearing it, there’s actually some pretty cool stuff going on in there. (More on that below.) Here’s every model you should be familiar with.