Richard Mille RM 035 Gold Toro Replica Watch

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Richard Mille RM UP-01

The world's thinnest mechanical watch is only 1.75mm thick

Richard Mille surprised the watch world with this new record-breaking product.

If you have a US quarter, take it out and see: this is what 1.75mm thick metal looks like. It is the same thickness as the thinnest new watch in the world: the Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari.

The new champion of this horological competition is determined by a fraction of a millimeter. Just a few short months ago, when Bulgari announced the world's thinnest 1.8mm watch, the reaction of the Richard Mille team must have been one of calm elation. They have a trump card because the RM UP-01 has been in development for years - and it's 0.05mm thinner than that. This is a difference of 50 microns, the equivalent of two adjacent white blood cells. The previous record was held by Piaget with a 2mm thick watch.

There's a lot of engineering and development to these mechanical marvels, but a big part of Piaget and Bulgari's solution was incorporating the movement's underlying structure (the motherboard) into the watch's caseback itself. Interestingly, Richard Mille took a different approach and managed to achieve this thinness while using a (relatively) "traditional" case construction, sandwiching the movement between the titanium case back and the bezel. (The movement itself is only 1.18mm thick.). men replica watches

Even more impressive is why they did it, and what they achieved: durability. The aim of Richard Mille watches is that, despite being expensive and complicated inside, they should be very strong and practical to wear - as athlete ambassadors like Rafael Nadal often attest, who wears them on his wrist to play professional tennis. The Richard Mille RM UP-01 may be very thin, but it has been tested to withstand accelerations in excess of 5,000 Gs, which is about 77 times what would kill the average person. (Although, it's not very waterproof, only 10m).

The main reason watchmakers have long struggled to make thinner watches (besides claiming records)? Comfortable. Richard Mille watches often feature bold proportions but impressive ergonomics, so it should be even more so for ultra-thin buy replica watches. Measuring 39mm long and 51mm wide, the RM UP-01, while seemingly breaking new ground for the brand in some ways, retains familiar design cues such as the tonneau case shape and prominent bezel screws .

While developing such a watch was not straightforward, the RM UP-01 was functionally basic, displaying only the hours and minutes on the sub-dial. The crown for winding and setting is also integrated into the plane of the bezel, as well as a separate mode selector. The wearer can also see the balance wheel through a 0.2mm sapphire crystal, below which is the Ferrari logo – the watch was announced to celebrate the partnership with the automaker.

Watches like these can showcase a brand's capabilities, they're not the kind of products that the average person can buy and wear. We would like to see more watch brands competing for thin but affordable watches, but sometimes the solutions found in the development of these halo products can trickle down to other sectors of the industry. Even snobs who might laugh at Richard Mille's typically brash and showy aesthetic have to admit it's impressive stuff.RICHARD MILLE RM 27-04 Rafael Nadal