Types of watch glasses
Silicon - Silicon
The most commonly used glass in the watch industry, where the main advantage is the price/quality ratio. It is not as hard as sapphire, so it can withstand a harder impact, but it can be scratched by a rough mechanical load.
Sapphire - sapphire
Sapphire glass - unscratchable glass that resists any kind of abrasion. Glass replacements are more expensive than others. Sapphire glass is actually synthetic (artificial) corundum. On the hardness scale, it is at number 9 - the hardest in the world is diamond at number 10. In comparison - silicon glass is in the numbers between 4 - 5. The base for sapphire glass is aluminum oxide, which melts at a temperature of 2150 degrees.
Experience shows that slightly convex sapphire glasses resist breakage better. This is probably due to the fact that an object that hits the glass will ride on the convex glass, whereas an impact on straight glass is direct - blunt. Convex glass is also stronger in shape and resists side impacts better.
Some sapphire crystals are coated with an anti-reflective layer to eliminate any glare that the sapphire crystal may produce, for example, when the watch is lit directly. The most effective anti-reflective layer is the one applied on top of the glass, the disadvantage here is the possible scratching of this layer, which can give the impression of a scratched sapphire crystal. For this reason, an anti-reflective layer on the underside of the glass is not as effective as the top layer (it does not absorb glare as effectively as the top layer), but there is no risk of mechanical damage. In some cases the glass has an anti-reflective layer on both sides.
Convex glass
Also called spherical. This is a silicon glass which, because it is convex, acquires the properties of a lens and therefore enlarges the dial, on which the time, date, etc., are then more legible.
Anti-reflective glass
An anti-reflective glass is a glass through which you can see even in direct sunlight - this glass can absorb bright light, direct light and reflections of the glass (so-called "piggies") and you can see all the data on the watch through it. Manufacturing technology - a nano-layer of special metal is applied to the sapphire crystal to absorb bright light. This layer is very hard and practically cannot be wiped off by normal wear. The anti-reflective layer is most often applied to sapphire glass.
There are two types of anti-reflective glasses - one type is made with the anti-reflective coating on the top surface of the glass and the other type is made with the coating on the bottom surface of the glass. You can tell that the glass has an anti-reflective coating by seeing the glass tinted blue when you tilt the watch a certain way.
Hardlex - hardened glass
These glasses are mainly used by Seiko, which was the first company to use them. It is a layer of artificial corundum - sapphire - deposited on silicon glass. This makes hardlex much harder than silicon, but it is not as hard as sapphire because this layer can be penetrated.
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