10 Biggest Mistakes people make when buying a Watch Winder

So now you need a watch winder with your recent increased inventory of precious timepieces. Where do you begin? Which is the best winder in the market? What features are important? Who do I trust for opinions?


Do your search prior buying and avoid making these 10 mistakes.


1) The Cheaper, the Better – The Price Factor

Most people thought they could save money when buying a cheap watch winder. Yes, some sellers even call it “Affordable” because after a few months they break down… you can afford to buy a new one.

Lower quality winders, use unreliable motors and low grade wood or plastics. They are generally built using these low quality parts that are cheaper. Most, if not many, users may be happy when they hit the ON switch for the first time on their new cheap winders, but just wait until a few months time down the road.


2) Buying a Lamborghini with a Pinto Engine – Motor reliability

If the micro-controller inside a watch winder is the “Brain”, then the motors are the heart. The winder unit must have a robust motor with enough torque to rotate the watches. The motor plays a very important role in maintaining the correct TPD. All cheap winders use cheap motors.

With regards to "noise", all mechnical parts emit a certain level of noise and noise is very subjective. It varies from person to person, the location they place the winders, the type of drive system in the particular winder and if the winder is an "open frame" type. There is no such thing as "No Noise" but "Low Noise".

3) My Winder has a GPS, an i7 Processor, a Weather Station, a ……. – Complicated Controls

Some people are just intrigue by all types of gadgets. Manufacturers now “try” to make it look high-end by including LCD panels, digital interfaces and even “one-touch” buttons just to maintain sales and the price level. Most of these end up being complicated and not user-friendly.

Controls should be plain and simple to enable to user to program the winder for its dedicated task. Controls such as Winding Direction and TPD settings are just sufficient for any unit.


4) Michelangelo designed my winder – Buying the “Look”

Don’t buy a cheap watch winder for the exterior looks; you’ll end up just buying a piece of furniture you don’t want in six months time.

Websites such as Amazon offer lots of customer feedback and comments about watch winders. The worst thing you could do is to read product reviews written by sellers themselves. They usually paint a rosy picture of some crappy product just to make sales.


5) It’s a STEINBECK so it must be good – Believing Marketing Hypes

Most winders are Rebranded products. Some companies claim they make their own but actually these units are just baptized with a foreign name to hype up sales. Even their prices are marked high to such an impression. There are only a handful of true watch winder manufacturers in the world who knows exactly how to make quality products. Others just "R&D" - Reverse (engineering) and Duplicate!

A quick check in Alibaba could give you tons of watch winders with the same exterior design, same winding sequences, same packaging, even the same product description but comes from many different companies, each claiming they make them.


6) I need a compact winder so a single head winding two watches is ok – Poor engineering

Of course economy of scale pays off where 1 winding head rotates two watches instead of only one. But did you know that only true watch winder manufacturers have only one head winding one watch? This means that one motor is dedicated to rotate one watch thus relieving the stress on the motors. The uneven weights of the watches will contribute to axial stress on the motor gears causing pre-mature failures.

However, this is not the same as how Buben-Zorweg winder units work where one motor with the help of a gearing system winds four heads. They use a very reliable Swiss motor for that matter.


7) All winders are the same – Buying “Copy” Winders

This is untrue! Many people have the misconception that all watch winders are the same and as such, whichever is cheaper is better. No, not all automatic winders are the same. For one, cheaper watch winders are just mass produced without prior R&D. They are also built with cheaper parts.

True watch winder manufacturers carefully select each component for their quality, reliability and durability. They are made to last. As with all electro-mechanical devices, if it breaks down one day, it is repairable not thrown away.

Better watch winders have better warranty periods.


8) A winder is simply made with a motor and some electronics - No in-depth knowledge

Such sweeping statements (remarks) usually come from a naïve person. After sieving, lurking, probing and investigating several websites for many years, I’ve discovered a few of the “secret recipes” that watch winder manufacturers have to make the perfect winder.

On the surface, it may be a simple box but diving deeper, one will know that not all winders are made the same. Their performance vary greatly.


9) My AD told me this is the BEST winder – Know what you want, don't be conned

Every sales person would like to close a deal. They will make every effort to convince you that their product is the best in the market. Again I say, “Do your research!” Don’t believe anything and everything he preaches. What the AD says is not gospel truth.

Survey! There are websites that gives unbiased reviews on some winders. Don't read those written by sellers themselves. Forums are another good place to enquire about winders before you pull the trigger on buying one. Use the “search” function in the forums. Read about the good, the bad, the pros and the cons.


10) My winder cost XX bucks and it broke down after 3 months – High expectations

You get what you pay for. If a cheap winder last more than 6 months, you should be thankful and happy. I’ve noticed most users expect a cheap electro-mechanical product to last forever. Even branded ones sometime fail but that rarely happens.

Do not make the same mistake of a person buying a cheap watch winder and after a few months becomes just a nice watch storage box. Buy with sense!

Labels: watch winder