[Sean779]

Many of their quartz pieces use inexpensive, and often Asian-made Swiss parts movements, which are not as accurate or high quality as their Swiss Made counterparts.

It's easy to assume this, but how do you know it?

 

[Sean779]

You can check out the manufacturer's spec/tech sheets. At least on the one's I've checked, the Swiss Made movements had tighter specs than their Asian counterparts.

Edit: Browsing a few movements on Ronda's site, they don't list separate performance specs for the Swiss parts vs Swiss Made. They only list jewel and plating differences between the two. Now this is going to gnaw at me until I remember the movements I checked...

Thanks for providing some background to your statement. I just got an Invicta quartz with the Ronda "Swiss Parts" and I wasn't quite sure what it meant. From what you're saying Ronda provides specs both for their Swiss made movement AND specs for the Swiss (Ronda) parts movements that are assembled in Asia. Does this mean that Ronda oversees/controls the Asian manufacturing/assembly of their movements? I'm assuming that must be the case or how otherwise would they have specs for those models to compare them with their Swiss sourced and assembled movements. I guess it does make sense that the Asian parts models could use non-Ronda parts that are made with looser tolerances.

For some reason I assumed that Swiss parts movement meant simply the movement was assembled in Asia.

As a bit of an aside, based on my experience with many quartz movements, Swiss and Japanese, the Rondas have been the best timekeepers. It's as though other quartz makers err too easily on making sure their quartz movements at least run fast while Ronda takes more of a chance on getting closer to +/- O sec. even if occasionally one emerges just a tad slow. My recent Invicta Swiss parts movement (Ronda) follows in that line for me as it also is pretty much +/- O sec.

 

[Sean779]

Ronda doesn't (currently?) list the specs differently for each location of manufacture. They list only one set of performance specs, regardless.
I don't know if Ronda oversees Asian manufacturing. I'd assume they at least audit the process from time to time. They definitely have to QC batch samples, probably locally and in Switzerland.

From what I can currently find, the only differences I see listed are the number of jewels (higher jewel count on the Swiss) and plating (gold on the Swiss vs nickel on the Asian) used. For some movements, they are the same.

They certainly wouldn't disclose the quantity of Swiss vs Asian components in either. Where the jewel count differs for the same movement caliber, I wouldn't think that the parts breakdown between the Swiss vs Asian production could be identical. Not sure what difference that otherwise makes, except, perhaps, longevity.

I also checked a few movements for ISA and ETA, and didn't see differences listed. I wish I could recall where I read the differences. It's probably best to take it with a grain of salt.
Maybe one of our resident watchmakers will chime in.

Edit: I found an 2009 post by lysanderxiii, on tz-uk.com here: TZ-UK • View topic - Quality quartz ETA movements

Here's the relevant quote:

Also, all of ETA's quartz movements were available in Swiss made and non-Swiss made.
955.xx2 or .xx1 are the Swiss ones
955.xx4 are the non-Swiss ones, these have slightly looser accuracy requirements, the Swiss are -0.3 to +0.5 s/d; the non-Swiss are -0.4 to +0.6 s/d.

It looks like ETA uses/used different calibers to denote their Swiss vs. Asian manufactures.
Don't know if it's accurate, but at least I know I wasn't imagining it. ;-)

good stuff, thanks! I had no idea these two lines of movements, Swiss and Asian, from Swiss manufacturers like ETA and Ronda. I'm certainly glad I asked you to back up your statement!