Is it bad to not wear an automatic watch for a long time?
Nothing in Seiko's manufacturer material shows that leaving an automatic watch unworn damages it. What it does establish is that the watch will stop once the power reserve is exhausted, and that some movements can be restarted by hand winding.
A hypothetical: the watch in the drawer
Say you own an automatic watch and you rotate it out of your regular wear for a few weeks. It sits in a drawer while you wear something else. What happens? According to Seiko's mechanical caliber page, the outcome is straightforward: the mainspring, wound by the motion of your wrist through the rotor, stops receiving energy. Once the stored energy is used up, the watch stops. For the Seiko caliber 6R20 described on that page, the Spron 510 mainspring generates a power reserve of more than 45 hours. So, hypothetically, roughly two days after that watch leaves your wrist, it is no longer telling time.
[2]That is the concrete, documented effect of not wearing an automatic watch: it stops. A stopped watch is not, on the evidence here, a broken watch. You reset the time and restart it.
[2]What the manufacturer pages actually support
It is worth being honest about the limits. The two Seiko pages used here cover the history of quartz timekeeping and the specification of certain mechanical calibers. Neither page discusses what happens to an automatic movement over months or years of storage, whether lubricants degrade from inactivity, whether regular running is beneficial, or whether a watch winder is recommended. Those are common questions, but they cannot be answered from this material, and inventing rules of thumb would be misleading.
[1][2]- Documented: the 6R20 caliber's mainspring generates a power reserve of more than 45 hours.
- Documented: the 6R20 and 6R15 calibers have hand winding capability, meaning the crown can be used to wind them.
- Documented: the 6R20 runs at 28,800 beats per hour, with 208 parts; the 6R15 has 168 parts.
- Not documented: whether long inactivity harms the movement, how often a stored watch should be run, or any guidance on winders, storage position, or service intervals.
A practical comparison: automatic versus quartz for intermittent wear
The comparison the sources do allow is about what each type of watch needs to keep running. Seiko describes the quartz watch as having a crystal oscillator at its core for accuracy, with the first commercially viable quartz watch, the Seiko Quartz ASTRON, released on December 25, 1969. Its timekeeping does not depend on being worn. An automatic watch, by contrast, depends on motion to stay wound. If your habit is to wear a watch only occasionally, that difference matters: the automatic will need attention each time you pick it up, while the quartz movement's design has no such dependence on wrist motion.
[1][2]A decision process, not a rule
Because the manufacturer material does not define a safe or unsafe storage duration, the honest approach is a verification process rather than a fixed rule. Here is how to work through it:
[2]- Identify the exact caliber in your watch. Specifications like power reserve and hand winding capability vary by movement; the Seiko page shows two calibers with different parts counts and features.
- Check the manufacturer's own care guidance for that caliber. Seiko's knowledge pages are examples of the kind of information worth seeking, but they do not cover storage.
- Confirm whether your movement has hand winding capability. If it does, restarting after a pause is a matter of winding via the crown and setting the time.
- For anything beyond that, such as long-term storage, service intervals, or winders, ask the manufacturer or a qualified service centre rather than relying on generic advice.
Next step: find your watch's caliber, read the manufacturer's care page for that movement, and note what it says about winding, power reserve and storage before you decide how often the watch needs to be worn or wound. If you are choosing between an automatic and a quartz model in the first place, factor those care habits into the decision alongside price and warranty terms.
[2]Sources and dates
- https://www.seikowatches.com/uk-en/customerservice/knowledge/quartz-knowledge · accessed 2026-10-18
- https://www.seikowatches.com/uk-en/customerservice/knowledge/mechanical-knowledge · accessed 2026-10-18