A mechanical watch carries no battery. It draws power from a mainspring that tightens when you wind it and unwinds in a controlled trickle. That energy travels through a gear train, gets parcelled out by the escapement, and is turned into seconds by the oscillating balance wheel and hairspring. The basic idea reaches back to the first portable timepieces made shortly after 1500 by craftsmen such as Peter Henlein, a locksmith in Nuremberg, while the wristwatch is generally credited to Abraham-Louis Breguet around 1810. The category splits two ways: manual watches you wind by hand through the crown, and automatics that wind themselves through a rotor driven by the motion of your wrist.
At the affordable end of the hand-wound world sits the Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical (H69439931): a 38mm steel field watch with the H-50 calibre and an 80-hour power reserve, usually £360 to £520. A step up, the Nomos Glashutte Tangente pairs clean Bauhaus looks with the hand-wound Alpha calibre, now designated DUW 4001, starting around £1,660 new. Higher still, Patek Philippe's manual 39mm Calatrava reference 6119 sells near £33,000, and the A. Lange & Sohne Lange 1, powered by the manually wound L121.1 with a 72-hour reserve, averages around £25,000. Zenith revived its historic Calibre 135 in the platinum G.F.J. at Watches and Wonders 2025, a reminder that hand winding still sits at the heart of haute horlogerie.
Buying one means setting expectations honestly. A good mechanical watch may drift 10 to 15 seconds a day, while COSC certification guarantees a tighter window of minus four to plus six. If you want the few-seconds-a-month precision of quartz, mechanical will frustrate you; if you want a movement you can wind, listen to, and keep alive for decades, you are in the right place. Manual movements tend to run thinner without a rotor, which dress-watch lovers favour, while automatics suit anyone who wears the same watch daily and would rather not fuss.
Factor in upkeep. Most mechanical watches want a service every three to five years, and a full overhaul typically runs £120 to £560 depending on the movement and the brand. That is the cost of the category, not a flaw in it. For a first mechanical, a Hamilton or a Seiko 5 makes sense; for movement-watching, choose a Nomos with a sapphire caseback; for something to pass on, an in-house manufacture calibre like the Calatrava or Lange 1 is where to look.