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Thanks for the info. To be honest I don't really know the difference between automatic and spring drive so need to do more reading before deciding and a lot more before handing over any cash.
jambon-
GS come in a few flavours:
- quartz (including high accuracy variants)
- mechanical hand-wound (needs winding daily)
- automatic (wind themselves when worn)
- hi-beat automatic (as above, but a faster beat rate which is a bit more exotic and is considered capable of greater accuracy at the expense of power reserve)
- spring drive
The latter is the one that is a bit of a head scratcher if you’ve not read much on it. It is automatic (ie self-winding) and powered by a mainspring like an automatic, but instead of having a mechanical escapement to regulate the rate of the hands it has a very clever and unique system that is regulated by a quartz crystal and microchip, using a magnetic brake. It is entirely self powered by the mainspring (no battery), hence “spring drive”. This is also why the second hand sweep on spring drive models is perfectly smooth (they don’t tick).
- quartz (including high accuracy variants)
Regal
The finishing is equally good on all Grand Seikos. The hands, markers and cases are all done the same way, except when you start getting into the more expensive “micro-artist” stuff. So yeah, even the most basic watches in the range have that GS “thing”.
They are a must to try on IRL though. They tend to be very shiny indeed (certain case designs especially) and the thickness is an issue in some of their watches IMO. Definitely need to be tried on.
The thickness thing is one reason why spring drive and/or their manual wind watches are worth looking at - they tend to be slimmer and wear better.