By Kristen Shirley
This story originally appeared in the September/October 2017 issue of Elite Traveler.
Today, thinness seems to be king. Everywhere from watches to smartphones, becoming thinner and thinner is an eternal quest, and often brands are forced to sacrifice one of the most essential components to achieve this: power. And without power, both are just pretty objects.
In horology, the number of hours of available power reserve and how the watch is wound are of crucial importance. Some people love the feeling of winding their own watches, and others dislike the task and would much prefer a self-winding timepiece. With a short power reserve, you’re constantly resetting the time or traveling with a watch winder. While Romain Gauthier has always searched for and created the most efficient winding systems possible—see his brilliant Logical One with a winding pusher integrated into the caseband and Prestige HMS Ten with a flat crown on the caseback—until now his collection did not have an automatic timepiece.
In the new, beautifully finished Insight Micro-Rotor, a 22K solid gold bidirectional micro-rotor is visible dial-side and provides up to 80 hours of power reserve, meaning you can take it off on Friday night and put it back on Monday morning without having to set the time. Available in several metal and dial combinations, our favorite is the platinum case with vivid blue enamel dial. All versions boast elegant finishings that adhere to haute horlogerie standards, perhaps most striking of which are the hand-frosted bridges with hand-polished bevels.
Insight Micro-Rotor in platinum with blue enamel dial, limited to 10 pieces, $92,000, contact Steven Rogers, s.rogers@romaingauthier.com, romaingauthier.com
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