If I was a new watch buyer I would be confused over this topic, however, having owned several Rolex watches with an Omega Seamaster sprinkled in, I have used watch winders for close to 20 years.
For me, the old adage “the proof in in the pudding” applies. Rotating my watches in and out of the winder for almost 20 years and never had any issue with any of them. As I type this, Omega has my 19 year old Seamaster for its first service. When they called me to advise of the service cost, to my surprise, it was just a service. No damage and the Seamaster has spent the most time on the winder ( maybe 8-12 months at a time).
RSC has serviced my other watches and again, just service, no damage. So I see how people have many different views on winders, but it’s been my experience that they are an essential tool if you have more than one or two automatic watches.
Now I’ve been told that other watches, maybe not as robust as Rolex, could have issues by spending months at a time in a winder. Like others have said, no right or wrong answer, just sharing my experience from say the last 20 years of using watch winders.
If anyone is curious, for the last 10 years, I’ve used the Brookstone quad winder X2.
