Five New Record-Breaking Watches From 2025
8 min read
The naturally creative and curious humans have been the orchestrators of innumerable scientific and technological breakthroughs. This continuation of the practice of innovation has led to shedding light on everything from quantifying our galaxy’s second growth spurt to understanding the positive psychological impact of reacting to your friend’s shared memes. The perpetuity of human ingenuity and inventiveness has resulted in an over-exhaustive volume of research and innovation, rendering the whole of it, a bit too puzzling to signify.
Thus, some good science gets lost in the heft of ordinary or even bad science.
Eureka Moments In Watchmaking Craft
The obsessive quest of innovating the existing and improving what’s perfect now has also been a glacial-paced undertaking for the watchmaking discipline. Here too, a stark disparity exists between meaningful innovation and a hollow objective of flex-worthy flourishes. Also, significant horological breakthroughs are rare. The stakes for watchmaking inventiveness however, literally haven’t been higher than at Watches and Wonders 2025, where audacious, ambitious and record-breaking horological undertakings were a consistent theme.
Prepare to witness the absolute expression of watchmaking-breakthrough. Here are the five new record-breaking watches from just the first three months of 2025.
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication
The Most Complicated Wristwatch Ever Made
There aren’t many watches that are exhaustive in the literal heft of their complexity. For the ones that are, a mere mention of their innovations is an exercise of tiring proportions. One timepiece in which volumes of complexity surpass epic echelons is the Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers “Solaria” Ultra Grand Complication, also known as - the world’s most complicated wristwatch. This double-sided timepiece is a horological Everest in the truest regards of mechanical complexity and miniaturization. Here are the numbers to endorse the former:
- 41 complications
- 1521 components
- 204 jewels
- 4 gongs and 4 hammers
- 8 years of research and development
- 13 patent applications filed
Vacheron Constantin is sort of making a habit of knocking out uber complicated watches. The Solaria ups the stakes from last year’s Berkley Grand Complication - the most complicated watch ever created. Surprisingly, all 1521 components of its caliber 3655 reside in a reasonably well sized case.
The Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication is a feat that somewhat feels like a fitting response to the hypothetical inquiry posed upon Morgan Freeman in the 2014 sci-fi thriller - Lucy, “What if we use 100% of our brain?”
Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon
The Thinnest Tourbillon Watch Ever
What fascinates me is how the watch industry’s obsession with “slimness” mirrors society’s toxic fixation on body image. I wonder what the people at Bulgari felt like when Piaget announced in 2024 the thinnest tourbillon watch in the world. The sourness of that feeling stands proven by Bulgari’s record-breaking response, not more than a year later, at Watches and Wonders 2025, the brand’s first-ever appearance at the fair.
The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon, with a total thickness of just 1.85 mm, is the latest exhibit of the brand’s Adrien Brody-level obsession with being thin. This fat phobia-driven invention measuring just 40mm x 1.85mm is a radical rethinking of contemporary watchmaking practices that represents the tenth edition of Bulgari’s redundancy exploits. This record-breaking timepiece triumphs in what is perhaps the most competitive segment in watchmaking today.
Despite the technical jubilation, one has to wonder: Is this relentless pursuit of thinness healthy or a sole exercise to gain bragging rights. Regardless, such an invention merits all the applause in the world.
Grand Seiko Spring Drive U.F.A. SLGB003
The Most Accurate Wristwatch Powered By A Mainspring
On a technical level, a Grand Seiko Spring Drive caliber is a hybrid movement. It achieves very high accuracy by pairing a mainspring-driven mechanical system with an electronic regulator, mainly a quartz crystal oscillator. Up until now, the peak execution of such a system would yield an accuracy of ±10 seconds per month. With the Spring Drive Caliber 9RB2, which receives the new U.F.A. (Ultra Fine Accuracy) designation, Grand Seiko sets a new standard of accuracy with an astounding annual rate of ±20 seconds, making it the most accurate wristwatch movement powered by a mainspring today. The secret to this uber-accurate timekeeping exception lies in the three-month-aged quartz oscillator and a newly designed IC. Both the oscillator and sensor are vacuum-sealed to prevent physics having its wicked impact on the movement’s timekeeping abilities.
The record-breaking caliber gets equipped in the Evolution 9 collection duo of SLGB001 and SLGB003, nicknamed “Ice Forest.” If the ±20 seconds annual rate doesn’t impress you, mind it, that’s 99.9999% accuracy or inversely a mere 0.0001% deviation. Still confused? That’s a deviation of just 20 seconds out of a total of 31,536,000 (31.5 million seconds) in a year. Beat that!
Ulysse Nardin Diver [AIR]
The World’s Lightest Mechanical Dive Watch
The Ulysse Nardin Diver [AIR] exists as a rare haute horlogerie sports watch execution. It performs at a very high echelon, both in technology and luxury terms - all this while weighing just 52g, including the strap. Packing in 200 meters of water resistance, you’ve got yourself the world’s lightest mechanical dive watch.
This watch is an extreme exercise in redundancy, with radical skeletonization execution rendering a timepiece that’s on Ariana Grande’s extreme diet. Its whittled-down caliber, though minimal in mass, can withstand impacts of 5,000 G. That’s more like a pro-golfer’s swing impact. The Diver [AIR] also attains the high horology benchmark of 90 hours of power reserve, despite there being less movement than your average Swatch SISTEM51.
Accepted, there are polar extremes to what we call high watchmaking. There’s one where you’ve a timepiece that crams in as many parts in a confined space as there are seeds in a sunflower head. And there’s one that’s an extreme opposite, where you remove as much as possible. That’s exactly what the Ulysse Nardin Diver [AIR] is and we choose to call it the ultimate high horology sports watch.
Jacob & Co. Astronomia Revolution Four-Axis Tourbillon
The World’s First Four-Axis Tourbillon With The Fastest Remontoir Ever
For me, Jacob & Co. timepieces are hundreds of thousands you decide not to spend on real estate. If there’s a word fit to describe their Astronomia collection, it’s going to be “utter insanity.” Also, if a triple-axis tourbillon is something too stale for your tastes, don’t be disappointed. The new Astronomia Revolution Four-Axis Tourbillon from Jacob & Co. is nothing but utter insanity blown to epic proportions.
The Jacob & Co. Astronomia Revolution Four-Axis Tourbillon offers the first-ever four-axis tourbillon in a watch. The quadruple-axis tourbillon offers rotation with movements cycling through 60 seconds for the main plate and 18, 15 and 60 seconds for the triple-axis. It also packs the world’s fastest remontoir mechanism. This record-breaking constant-force device releases energy every one-sixth of a second, instead of the usual rate of once per second, making it the fastest remontoir in the world.
Jacob & Co.’s approach to watchmaking, or whatever they do, is a distant aside to what masses prefer. The Astronomia Revolution Four-Axis Tourbillon packs in a cosmos of innovation with the added utility of time. To me, works fine for a record-breaking timepiece.
A Rare Proliferation Of Genius
The unflipping-believable rate at which scientific research is published makes it an overburdening endeavor for a normal person to keep track of all that’s innovating. Maybe that’s not for everyone to endure and understand. However, as an ardent enthusiast of the watchmaking craft, I wish for a scaled-up proclamation of the breakthroughs and wonders perpetuated by this rare true-to-tradition manifestation of civilization’s most essential utility - time.
Here records, although attained to only be bettered, more than just outdo the old, but rather exhibit timekeeping brilliance of the highest order.
