Can You Wear An Automatic Watch Every Day?

Activity by activity

The ratings below are read off the manufacturers' published water resistance figures. The rule they come from: 30m is splashes, 50m is splashes plus brief immersion, 100m is the first rating that covers swimming, and 200m with a screw-down crown is a dive rating. Water resistance ratings explained sets out why the printed depth is a lab pressure figure rather than a diving depth.

The two activities to actually avoid

Almost everything on that table is fine with a 100m watch. Two things are not, and neither is about water.

• Sharp impact sports.Golf, tennis, squash and racquetball deliver a short, violent shock straight through the wrist. Shock-protection systems — Seiko's Diashock, which Orient also uses on its in-house F6 calibers — are designed to stop a balance staff breaking in an ordinary knock, not to absorb a swing repeated two hundred times. A watch that has taken a hard impact and then started losing time is the classic presentation; see why is my automatic watch losing time.
• Saunas and hot tubs.Water resistance is tested with pressure, not heat. Hot water and steam expand the case and age the gaskets, and a watch rated 200m at room temperature is not rated for a 90°C sauna. There is no depth figure that makes this safe.

Wearing it every day is good for the movement

Two practical consequences follow from daily wear, and both are in your favour.

First, the watch stays near full wind, which is the state in which it keeps its best time. A movement running on the last hours of its reserve loses amplitude and loses time — why does my automatic watch stop covers that failure mode in detail. Second, you can actually judge its accuracy. Orient's own usage guidance for its in-house calibers is to wear the watch at least eight hours a day and to judge the rate over a week rather than a day, which is only possible on a watch in constant rotation.

What daily wear does not do is bring a service forward. Service intervals are driven by lubricant ageing and dust ingress as much as by running hours, and what a service costsmakes the case that the "every five years" rule is inherited rather than universal.

The strap is the part that will not survive

Nothing on a watch fails as predictably as a leather strap worn daily. It absorbs sweat, it stiffens, it stains and it smells, and on a 30m case it is also the reason you have to take the watch off before a shower. If you want one watch for everything, buy it on a steel bracelet. If you already own the dress watch, how to change a watch strap covers moving it onto something you can rinse, and how to resize a watch bracelet covers getting a steel bracelet to actually fit.

Sleeping in it, and the one real argument against

There is no mechanical reason not to sleep in an automatic watch — it keeps it wound, and movement in bed is enough to top up most rotors. The arguments against are practical: a steel bracelet catches on bedding, a watch on a nightstand gets knocked onto a hard floor, and if you sleep with your wrist under a pillow you may find the watch runs differently overnight, because rate varies with position. If you take it off, put it dial-up rather than crown-down and you will usually see a smaller overnight drift.

Watches with no daily-wear limits

The three picks below all publish water resistance of 100m or better with a screw-down case, and all three ship on a steel bracelet — which is the combination that removes the decisions. Two of the three also publish a sapphire crystal, which is the spec you will thank yourself for after a year of doorframes.