Crown bite annoyance

A lot of the best looking watches have that nicely sized crown right at 3 o'clock. The crown is the main point of interaction between the treacherous world and the pristine timekeeping environment within the watch case. With enough engineering behind it, even the deepest of oceans cannot pierce the undulating movement that shows the time flowing through my fingertips, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.

But give that crown a little pull or twist, and it's paralyzed. Time stops for a brief moment, but for good reason - you have to adjust it because of travel, daylight savings time, or just plain inaccuracy. So it makes sense from a user interface perspective that the crown should be prominent. But that doesn't stop me from having a problem with it.

Watches tend to slide up and down my wrist a little bit. I don't wear them too tight, but also not too loose. I definitely run into scenarios where my hand bends back towards the top of my forearm. Or I can be walking with my arms at my side, watch hanging down a little bit. If there's a prominent crown poking out of the case, well... it'll come into contact with the back of my hand. And that's where my problem starts.. I just plain don't like feeling and experiencing that crown bite.

I have sold off several watches because of this irritation. I had this beautiful 38mm Hamilton Khaki Field Automatic, but pretty much right away became irritated with the crown. Other watches I'm still putting up with for now.

This severely hinders my interest in a lot of the watches being produced nowadays. Every single watch coming out seems to have that large crown at 3 o'clock - Oris, Tudor, IWC, Lorier, Seiko you name it. So many cool watches that I'll likely never buy because of my dislike of crown bite. Maybe that's better for my wallet overall though!

Even some 4 o'clock crowns can be problematic. The Seiko SKX007 has a 4 o'clock crown and some crown guards - the top crown guard is actually quite pointy and may even be equally as uncomfortable as a crown poking out at 3!

For that reason, I'm finding myself really preferring watches like the Citizen BN0151 (4 o'clock crown, small crown guards), Seiko SNK809, G-Shocks, and even Apple Watch *gasp*.

Luckily there are still tons of fun options to try out, even with this gripe of mine.