The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hey folks,

I own a chrono SuperOcean as well as a Seamaster however my question is w/ regards to Kinetic watches.

Is it correct to describe Kinetic movement as closest to quartz movement (w/ the obvious proviso that its power source is a kentic coil charged capacitor as opposed to a battery) and in saying so they are respectively not automatic movement timepieces at all?

Thanks,
Josh

PS: My quartz Omega battery died every 4 years (on the button), looks like the caps on kinetics need to be replaced every 8 years - is that true?

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:: Chrono SuperOcean, blue diver strap

Found confirmation on wikipedia although I'm not certain referring to Kinetic as an "evolution of automatic" is correct.. Regardless it would appear kinetic is to quartz movement as self-winding is to automatic movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... c_Movement

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:: Chrono SuperOcean, blue diver strap

The kinetic watch has the obvious advantage of the quarz accuracy combined with the automatic independence.

The disadvantage of a kinetic Watch: When ist stops running, You can replace the movement, as long as it is available, but You can hardly repair anything. Serious brands offer original replacement parts for those watches for approximately 10-15 years.

Also the resalevalue drops to nearly nothing.

BG
Thomas

I have heard from a number of sources that the Kinetic capacitors are not overly hardy and can fail, resulting in (as Thomas has said) the whole watch often having to be ditched....

The first two generations of kinetic watches had accumulators, which where to be changed after 3-5 years...

They cost about 10 times the price of a normal battery.

The actual collections are a lot better than that.

BG
Thomas

Yeah, I had an old school Seiko Kinetic that needed a "battery" replacement that cost $20!

The newer Kinetics are actually quite cool in that they have auto relays that put the watch in sleep mode and it still memorizes the date/time/etc so it comes back to life when you use it again.