Watch winders are a great way to keep your automatic watches ticking without having to wear them every day. This is useful if you have multiple watches and don’t want to set your watch each time you decide to wear one. If you store the watches you aren’t wearing in watch winders then you will always have a fully charged collection and can wear whatever you want worry free. Keeping watches running is particularly useful if your watch features certain complications such as a moon phase or perpetual calendar as they can be time consuming to reset. There are a few options to consider when picking a winder though to ensure you get the right one, the most pressing of which is size. 

Watch winders come in all shapes and sizes ranging from small, discreet and minimalistic boxes all the way up to large vault like cabinets which can store multiple watches. The decision of watch winder is best for you is simple enough, all you need to do is look at your current set up. If you only have a couple of watches then the large winders will be unnecessary. The larger winder also takes up more room so you would have to ensure you have the space for them. For instance, a single watch winder can comfortably fit on a bed side table but many of the multi watch winders would just be too big. If you live in a flat and space is a premium then a small discreet winder would be more appropriate. 

The flip side of that though is that the larger case grants you greater flexibility if you intend to sell and buy watches frequently. You don’t have to worry about having extraneous boxes or realising you went from two watches to four and suddenly don’t have enough winders to keep them all ticking. An unused space in a larger box is less annoying than having a whole winder underutilised. The other advantage is if you already have a large collection than one multi watch winder will take up less space than lots of dedicated winders. The large winder will also be powered through one plug whereas the smaller winders will need to be powered individually. 

If however you aren’t sure between the two then there is a very practical option in modular winders. The Boxy winder, which is available at our shop, helps to blend the gap between the two. Offering the minimalism and space saving looks of single winders but can be stacked together as your collection grows. You can get sixteen winders stacked together which will all be charged through one plug socket. These modular winders offer the best of both worlds and can effectively keep your watches going. 

Another factor to consider is the cost of a watch winder. They come in a variety of prices starting from a few hundred for a good quality winder such as the Rapport EVO MK3 but can get well into the thousands. The Rapport Templa range is priced at just over £4,500 which will get you all the features you could ever need and can hold four watches. Winders have a very widely spread range of costs and I would advise you browse for the winder you are most comfortable with.  

One point worth mentioning is the concerns around watch winders. There is a lot of talk about the possibility of watch winders over winding a watch and damaging it. Whilst this might be possible on very old vintage watches, modern watches and even the majority of vintage watches can’t be overwound. The way winders work is by rotating the watch a set number of times a day, on more expensive models this can be programmed manually. The winder will only wind the watch enough to maintain its current power level and not any more. That means if you placed your watch at 40% power then the winder will only keep it at 40%.  

Even if your winder attempted to wind the watch above the maximum amount of power the mainspring can hold the watch itself wouldn’t allow it. Most watches, and certainly all modern watches have built in fail safes to stop the watch being overwound. So not only are winders not designed in a way that could overwind a watch, even if they were watches have in built defences against being overwound. 

Watch winders are very useful tools to store your collection in a safe way that won’t force you to set your watches each time you wear one. If you have multiple watches and any number of them are automatic then winders are a great way to simplify the use of each one