|
It's not just the 18K gold case, diamond studded, Rolex crowd that uses them.
Most divers' watches are autowind. Dive watches in which a battery has to be replaced have to be serviced in a nitrogen environment to purge atmospheric humidity so the watch doesn't fog up inside during use. The watertight seals also have to pressure checked. Most divers and dive shops don't have the equipment to do this. Sending a battery operated dive watch out for battery replacement every few years becomes an expensive nuisance.
Mechanical autowind watches need servicing only every 10-15 years for cleaning, lubrication, and seal testing/replacement. Routinely wearing them to keep the mechanism moving helps keep their lubrication from congealing and extends the service interval. For those who don't regularly wear their dive watch, that's where the automatic watch winder comes in. I can imagine a dive shop or a dive club having a watch winder that holds 8 watches to keep that piece of dive equipment in good shape and ready to go for them.
The lesser accuracy of mechanical movements is a red herring considering the length of duration for a typical dive and for most other purposes. Not to mention that when your phone battery goes dead or you drop your phone in the toilet, your Naval Observatory time (accurate to within milliseconds) will no longer exist for you. With an autowind diver's watch, a thorough rinse and you're good to go. That's why they're also used by military, police, sportsmen, and all sorts of others.
Of course, there are kinetic hybrids in which the mechanism charges a capacitor which powers a more accurate quartz movement. There are solar powered dive watches. There are even high end battery operated quartz dive watches like mine which runs for 8 years on a battery and is accurate to within 20 seconds a year (typical quartz watches are at about 20 seconds a month). Battery operated dive watches can be made smaller than the others so mine is also my everyday watch. The aforementioned are all expensive; however, compared to a basic mechanical autowind diver's watch that gets the job done. A $100 watch winder is icing on the cake for a budget minded working stiff who needs to use a DURABLE timepiece.
If it had the AC adapter included at that price, I would have been interested as my backup watch is a workhorse all mechanical autowind diver's that I have to remember to wear occasionally to keep the lubrication moving. I try to do that when I have to be out in the rain and when I go swimming: my cell phone doesn't exactly excel at those.
|