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It used to be that you had to be careful when wearing an expensive watch, but today's luxury sports watches are built to handle just about anything you can throw at them. They go through a battery of tests, often to the point of destruction, just so you can be certain it will perform flawlessly on your wrist.
In 2014, Victorinox Swiss Army introduced the I.N.O.X. collection, with watches put through gruelling tests including being run over by a tank, dropped off buildings, put into the washing machine on a two-hour cycle and more, all with the goal of producing the toughest timepieces on the market.
"We wanted a product that could resist anything," explains François Nunez, product and creative director, Victorinox Swiss Army. "There is no secret - we just did the testing, readjusted, tested again and repeated. We went through over 500 different stages and samples. We destroyed so many watches." At £379-£479, depending on the strap, it's also excellent value.
Bremont takes this even further, with some of their watches tested on Martin-Baker ejection seats. The watch is strapped on to the seat and then shot out of the cockpit, all to make sure their watches will keep on ticking.
"With the new F35 seat testing programme from Martin-Baker, we piggybacked on a lot of those tests as they are so expensive to do," says Nick English, co-founder of the Bremont Watch Company. "Our new MBII [£3,595] can withstand just about anything. When you see the footage of the crash and vibration testing, it clearly proves that you can use these watches in any environment."
Ralf Tech is a relatively new watch company founded by Frank Huyghe, with the goal to design and produce the best possible dive watch. A dive industry supplier, Huyghe segued into watches in 2007. He used the French equivalent of the UK Special Forces to test his prototypes, eventually implementing the changes and ideas they had into his production model.
The result is the €1,800 WRX Hybrid Black "O", a 300-piece limited edition which is water resistant to 1,000 metres.
"We have several thousand Special Forces soldiers testing our watches around the world," says Huyghe of his firm's rigorous methodology. "There is no better test than a soldier falling from a plane at 8,000 metres, doing a free jump for 7,000 metres and landing in the water. You can do anything you want in the lab, but it won't be as real."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
