What is the Most Useful Complication on a Mechanical Watch?

There’s been an ongoing debate within the watch community regarding what can be considered the most useful complication on a mechanical watch in our modern era. To be a useful complication it should be easy and quick to operate, provide actual value in its use case, and preferably a complication that’s quite common to come by.

Let the Community Decide

The general consensus in terms of the winning complication falls on the simple timing bezel, aka diving bezel. This is a very simple to operate complication, and it’s found on the most prolific type of sports watches, that is the diving watch.

The turning bezel allows you to measure elapsed time, either in a unidirectional rotating form that enhances safety while under water or the less common bidirectional form. To operate the function simply turn the bezel that is marked with a timing grid, and line up the marker or Arabic numeral of your choice with the minute hand of the watch. As the minute hand slowly glides along the dial you can measure the elapsed time etched on the bezel. This is a very simple form of timing literally anything from a pizza in the oven, to something more serious such as a race or interview.

Alternatives

The runner up to the timing bezel is of course the chronograph function. Although it’s less simple to operate it can record more detailed timing, such as elapsed seconds, minutes, and hours simultaneously. The real issue with this function is the time and effort require to operate it since this type of timing mechanism requires pushers to be activated, that can at times be guarded by screw down crowns.

To operate this function you’d have to unscrew all the crowns, ensure the chronograph has been reset to zero. You’d then have to push the starting pusher, and push it again to halt the timing, followed by pushing the bottom pusher to reset the hands when necessary. The biggest kicker to this form of timing is that the watch needs to be off your wrist to operate it safely without any risk to damaging the watch. So as you can see here this is a more cumbersome process to the timing bezel.

Controversial

While recording elapsed time can usually be considered the most productive complication on a watch, there’s a myriad of other complications that are available on watches, some of which are really only found on high horology watches like the perpetual calendar.

There is one mechanical complication that has been debated for ages, and that’s the power reserve complication. This complication is usually in the form of some type of display on the dial, and it indicates the amount of power left in the movement. It can be found on both hand-wound and automatic watches, an it’s considered a relatively niche but cool complication, with many watchmakers getting creative with the design implementation. Watch enthusiasts tend to either love it, or hate it, with some saying that it’s absolutely useless and a waste of space on the dial. Some enthusiasts believe it’s very useful as they’re aware of when they should be winding the watch to power it back up, and they enjoy the creativity behind the display.