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After two years of the kind of exuberance and endeavor that brought a Rolex emoji watch, colored lab-grown diamonds, 3D-printed gold, light-sucking cases, and even a Stormtrooper metaverse watch, 2024's Watches and Wonders—the annual trade show of the international watch and jewelry industry—feels positively tame in comparison.
Perhaps this is because big-brand chief executives have acknowledged an increasingly uncertain market. Swiss watch exports are slowing after a record run. According to a Morgan Stanley report in collaboration with WatchCharts, prices on the secondary market decreased in Q4 last year for the seventh quarter in a row.
Yes, with all this in mind, it wasn't surprising to find many of the releases from the globally recognized names lining the halls of the Palexpo in Geneva to be more subdued. Still, thankfully, we managed to seek out the watches worthy of a WIRED mention. Here they are.
Bulgari Makes World’s Thinnest Watch (Again)
You may recall that last year Richard Mille took the title from Bulgari for the world's thinnest watch with its RM UP-01 Ferrari coming in at an implausible 1.75 millimeters tall, all in—practically the same as a 25-cent coin. Well, clearly somewhat peeved at being dethroned, Bulgari has hit back with the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC, regaining the crown for creating the thinnest watch on the planet.
This new version of the Octo Finissimo pips the Richard Mille by 0.05 millimeters at just 1.70 millimeters thick. The 40-millimeter case contains a 170-component manually wound movement with a tungsten carbide back for much-needed durability on such a slender piece.
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The price for such lofty achievements in horology? Limited to only 20 examples, this record-breaker will set potential owners back more than half a million dollars ($529,000 to be precise).
IWC’s 45-Million-Year Moon Watch
With its Portugieser Eternal Calendar, IWC is dealing with some big numbers. The perpetual calendar function (showing days, months, and years), for instance, is set up to run without any correction for 400 years (traditional perpetuals need adjustments once a century, if you’re counting).
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But the accompanying moonphase indication goes somewhat bigger: It’s calculated to give an accurate representation of the moon’s waxing and waning for 45 million years, by which time it will have deviated by just one day.
That’s enabled by some spectacular mathematics around gear-wheel geometries: For the wheels involved, the team whittled down 22 trillion combinations for the proportions, number, and shape of the teeth to find a solution (using a dedicated computer simulation).
To ensure accuracy to the required micro-tolerances, the gears were made by the LIGA microfabrication process, in which parts are effectively “grown”—built up nano-layer by nano-layer—in the lab through a high-tech photolithographic process. It costs around $210,000, but spread that out over 400, or indeed 45 million years, and this piece becomes far more affordable.
TAG Heuer Makes Square Waves
TAG Heuer’s famous square-form watch, as sported by both Steve McQueen and Breaking Bad’s Walter White, is a dyed-in-the-wool 1970s classic that’s recently been experiencing a phase of high-tech revisionism. That reaches a peak in the new Split-Seconds Chronograph.
The split-seconds—or rattrapante—is an intricate mechanism associated with top-tier classical horology (it’s a Patek Philippe specialty, for instance) in which the stopwatch seconds hand divides in two, to measure separate timing intervals (like laps) concurrently.
TAG Heuer’s version is anything but classical—rather, it borders on the brutalist: The case is in lightweight titanium, sandwiched between thick slabs of sapphire crystal that bring light streaming into the mechanism’s complexities, via a distinctively architectural, skeletonized dial format. Priced at $138,000, the watch is lavished with hand-finishing techniques, while customization options are also being offered.
Rolex and Tudor Go Diving for Gold
While many in the high-end product world are still talking about the 2023 trend of quiet luxury, the big surprises from both Rolex and sister brand Tudor at the watch fair this year shared a common and decidedly unsubtle theme: gold (and lots of it).
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Rolex dropped its new 18-karat, solid-gold, 44-mm Deepsea that has water resistance up to 3,900 meters, and is heavy enough to pull you down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench at speed. In fact, Rolex told WIRED it is the heaviest watch the company has ever produced, even despite its RLX titanium caseback. However, having tried this hefty $52,100 watch on, WIRED can confirm it's much easier to wear than many might think.
Not to be outdone, Tudor, having made a gold version three years ago, now has a Black Bay 58 in yellow gold complete with 18-karat gold bracelet. It's like the brand has come back and finished what it started—and in some style, too. The whole 39-mm piece is fully matte and satin-finished, is water resistant to 200 meters, and has 70 hours of power reserve. The price? It will set you back $32,100, which is laudably punchy, and a fair bit more than the previous $18,000 Black Bay 18-karat without the bling strap.
Bovet’s World-First World-Timer
The problem with World Timer watches is that they cannot directly account for changes of daylight saving time (DST) in the countries that put their clocks forward one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall. Yes, there are workarounds, but no comprehensive solution—until now.
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Ultra-high-end Swiss watchmaker Bovet has created the Récital 28 Prowess 1 watch, and it can indeed adjust to DST changes. How? A revolutionary roller system can be set at the touch of a button to show UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), AST (American Summer Time), EAS (Europe and American Summer Time), or EWT (European Winter Time) in any of the 24 time zones represented on the dial by 24 rollers.
It's a system that is simple to read but bewilderingly complex in construction, which might explain why Bovet estimates that it can manufacture only eight pieces per year. Indeed, the CHF 650,000 watch (approximately $711,400), complete with perpetual calendar and flying tourbillon, has been in development since 2019, with Bovet scrapping the first completed version then starting all over again in order to nail the unique DST function.
Patek Philippe Crosses the Date Line
Speaking of World Timer watches, Patek Philippe is, among other horological feats, the absolute OG of the World Timer complication, in which 24 time zones are all displayed in a single watch. Patek has been making these since 1937, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still innovate the format: Its new example includes a subtle-as-you-like date display that’s capable of crossing—and recrossing—the international date line.
What does that mean? On any World Timer, the central hands indicate your local time while the other zones are shown on a rotating 24-hour ring off-set against 24 cities around the world. When traveling, adjusting your local time zone east or west could take you across the date line, which normally would require correcting the date.
For the $76,590 Patek Philippe 5530G, the date corrects itself either forward or backward—a simple concept, but mechanically complex (and now patented by Patek), with a display that is itself innovative: A hand pointing to date numerals around the dial’s exterior is made from a hairthin slice of glass, so as not to disturb the legibility of the other dial indications.
Montblanc’s Carbon-Sucking Chrono
Carbon-fiber—strong, lightweight, and offering a variety of diverting textural styles—has become a favorite modern material for the luxury watch industry, which is also keenly playing up its sustainability credentials at any (frequently tendentious) opportunity. Sensibly, Montblanc has refrained from making any specific eco-claims with its new 1858 Geosphere 0 Oxygen CARBO2, while showing some deftness in harnessing emerging tech from the sustainability sector.
For the past few years, several bodies have been researching the use of sequestered CO2 for the production of carbon-fiber composites. Montblanc’s supplier captures CO2 from biogas production and mineral waste from recycling factories, from which a powder is obtained that feeds into a nano-fiber composite known as Carbo2. That’s used to make the case of this $9,100 sporty chronograph with Montblanc’s unusual rotating-globe GMT display.
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