Engineering Luxury: The World's Thinnest Luxury Watch 

Would have been funny had this been sponsored by Vincero.

I have always known on an academic level just how much work would go into watch making, however to actually see a brief glimpse of just how involved it is turns it into an artform.

The level of design and engineering in this watch is mind bending.

Never really been a wristwatch fan but, wow is this an incredible example of exquisite materials science and mechanical engineering.

I loved how respectful this video was of the craft of watchmaking while also pointing out the ridiculousness of the industry. I’m a minor watch collector, don’t have a whole lot of money to spend on the hobby, so I’m always looking for a good value rather than a brand name. These days you can find just about any kind of watch you would like between $300-$1500, as long as you aren’t looking for a ‘Patek Philippe’ or an ‘Omega’ written on the dial.

1:25 - Chapter 1 - Economics of prestige 2:50 - Chapter 2 - Analogs tools for a digital age 5:55 - Chapter 3 - Pushing boundaries 8:15 - Chapter 4 - Manufacturing a dream 10:00 - Chapter 5 - Unique difficulties - Chapter 6 -

I love when two different YT creator types I watch regularly crossover. (Watches and Engineering/Science)

Ooo..."Veblen goods" ... love learning new words!

This I what I explain to people who ask me if I'd ever get a smart watch; I appreciate wearing mechanical art. Bonding with a watch, and having what feels like a special relationship with time.

What a beautiful and magnificent piece of engineering! I think I'm in love!

As a collector of the holy trinity (ap, vc, pf) I can safely say the pleasure of classic mechanical horology is the legacy of the art. I have a piece that has day/date logged for 500 years. It's a beautiful art.

This was a truly awesome sideproject that I wouldn't have otherwise known about. Thank you!

Really love it, and I’m definitely getting one, on their first 99% off sale.

as a Swiss im proud to see that almost every luxury watch brand comes from here. it seems our ancestors mastered watchmaking.

Dad joke at the end...LEGEND

I love complicated machines and collect some: mechanical & automatic watches, firearms, and motorcycles, including a very complex V-4 bike. Loved this video.

I've got a Seagull automatic watch that's fully skeletonized. You can see every moving part in action. It's really cool.

Nice deep dive into Piaget. I own an Omega, and I would love to see more videos on Swiss watches. Some of them have a wonderfully rich history with great stories to match. Piaget's epic design and engineering story is indicative of many Swiss watches.

It's on my Christmas list. Come on Santa, daddy needs a new watch!

It always seems illogical to buy a mechanical watch, but there's an appeal for some of us. I work in high technology and like to be an early adopter for many things. However, to me there's something honest about an automatic mechanical watch and I have a RW Freelancer Open as a time piece. It has an open heart, winds itself and is totally incorruptible by technology, electricity or anything else.

Time is more precious than something you cannot feel. I need to feel it on my wrist. This PIAGET watch is amazing in its construction . . . it's so small DON'T LOSE IT

Congratulations to the Company and their team for such an achievement! Also congratulations to anyone that can afford one and buy it.

Awesome to see you mention Zelos. Tiny microbrand that is making waves

Lol, and today is the day I'm going to Wal-Mart to treat myself to a new watch for $15 to $20 max. My band broke on my old $15 watch after a decade of service. I'm tired of the shoelaces I used to keep it on my arm for the last three years.

Finally a video within my price range to buy Simon! Maybe next video can be on some of my other collectibles like rare and expensive Faberge Eggs next or largest diamonds in the world!

Saw a video about this watch a while back. Honestly, this was is very much impressive in plenty of ways over most rolexes

Honestly this watch in person is so much more breathtaking. In it's world it's actually not that outlandish in price. It also offers something your run of the mill Mille or Patek does not. It's the "most" of something. It's not simply a name.

What a beautifil watch! Thanks for sharing this. Maybe in my next life!

This doesn’t even seem like it should be a side project

As a watch collector I admire the engineering that went into this timepiece. If I was to purchase one it could not be an everyday wear watch but worn only on special occasions that demand a certain level of attire and refinement.

Being a person who loves working with their hands, I first visited Switzerland in 1969. While attending college I discovered Piaget. I worked and saved for my first watch. After 40 years, I won't wear any other.

The King of YouTubia blesses us with another quality channel!..AND its got my favorite watch on it too!.. I looooooove Piaget watches..and this one is a masterpiece!.. Great Work Simon! thanks Dude

Laziness is the mother of invention 😉

DO MORE WATCHES This was excellent.

Thank you so much for this video❤

The pun at the end lol 😂

Finally!! FactBoy does watches!! Thats my jam!!

13:40 all of my watches are off-hand jokes **WHY DIDN'T THAT GET A RIMSHOT**

You should a watch-only channel!!!!! Hell yeah.

As a man who lives in the ACTUAL Altiplano (the high plateau in the Bolivian Andes) this is very ironic.

I have a Hamilton open face 974, vintage 1920, 17 Jewel (ruby) w/interurban face. My wife bought it for my 30th birthday (LOL: don't trust anything or anyone over 30 to TIME). In 2018, it stopped at 3 MINUTES to TWELVE. I took it as an OMEN and haven't wound it since. I have a vintage Rolex "Tank-er", circa 1925 wristwatch in the lock-up... something for the two boicheck grand kiddies to squabble over. In nearly pristine condition, it came to me from my Da from his Da. Ought to be worth a year or so at University when they come of age. In the will I left a 1920 Liberty Head "Peace" Dollar, with instructions that the boys are to flip for the watch: Winner Take All, in the Welsh Tradition. I'd LOVE to have that Piaget but... out of the Budget. One don't wear a watch no more, anyway. One look in the mirror is all it takes to clue me on the one-way NOTION and MOTION of Time (with a capital "T"). GREAT presentation. Worth the watching. (Couldn't resist). ✋

Love the pun at the end... Good one Simon..

Unexpected and great video.

More like this please.

Megaprojects suggestion. Opposite end of the horological spectrum; How the 2nd industrial revolution of the 1880's made possible the regular working man's everyday pocket watch, & how the broad adoption of the everyman's pocket watch in turn drove the wide scale industrialisation at the turn of the 20th century.

I kinda expected Simon will scream at the end, "DANNY, WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS!"

When I was little the coolest thing I owned was a watched that, when a button was pressed, said the time aloud. I had it taken away from me at school because I kept bumping the button during class and interrupting the teacher.

Of course you released this beautiful video on the day my watch died… it so beautiful, hopefully the Watch Repair can restore it to its former glory!

C'mon...who else remembers those tiny watch rings at 7:19 ?! And who else remembers them pinching the delicate skin on the sides of your fingers? 😆 Personally, my favourite watch EVER is the Pop Swatch! I loved the soft band if you wanted to wear it on your wrist, but I mostly wore it 'popped' onto my t-shirt (because very oversized t-shirts were THEE thing at the time...ah, the 1990s...); I hate watches because 1. I get a rash from sweat accumulating between the watch & my wrist, & 2. I always have to wear my watch 'upside down', otherwise I'd ding up the face because I apparently am a klutz who bangs her wrist onto walls, etc on a regular basis. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I finally misplaced my last remaining PopSwatch some time in the early 2ks, and I've missed it ever since. Maybe those will come back into style soon too! 😄

Also, the timing on the badum-tish was as accurate as my own timekeeping... :P

This wasnt just a good explaination on a time peice, but a lovely philosophical/economic intro to the idea of luxury.

In short, the easiest way to get an engineer to put the effort into something is to make a joke about it.

Crazy to think that about six months after this video was released Richard Mille unveiled a watch called the UP-01 that is even thinner - 1.75mm. They made 150 of them and they retailed for about $1.9 million US.

FWIW: I wear a Marathon mechanical wrist watch with tritium glow tubes on the face and hands. Definitely NOWHERE NEAR the cost of the watch in this video, but I like it. No electronics, no battery, just a plain analog wrist watch with the _magic tritium glow._ 😊

I love my analog watches.

Maybe on your Biographics channel, you should cover the life of George Daniels. Probably the greatest british watch maker in the last century. He invented the Co-Axial Escapement.

Those drums and cymbal strike (at the near end) were completely mis-timed!

Can not believe the price it CLOCKED in at.

Simon, you are a watch collector I can tell, take it from another one. The video you did on saturation diving, with the helium escape valves, either you have the best researchers in the world or you or someone on your team are watch collectors. And you know of Zelos and Elshan Tang? *Definitely* a watch guy. That is a microbrand, I am IMPRESSED!

As someone who doesn't bother to wear a watch, I found this fascinating. Great video.

Great video, just dropping a like and comment for the algorithm 👍👍

I can imagine accidentally bending it into a curve just by tightening the strap.

Simon, your beard has reached a truly epic status!

Well since you're doing this how about Grand Seiko spring drive

Whats funny is im almost certain i heard simon say the watch costs $430,000. Im totally lost for words.

Honestly, when you said it was $430k, I was actually surprised it was that 'cheap'! My exhusband is into watches (though we obviously could never afford anything wicked high end like this, haha), and I had no idea what work goes into them until I met him. Mildly-amusing anecdote: My ex, his brother, and their father went on a trip together & all bought fake Rolex watches as a joke & souvenir of the trip. Dad's eventually had some kind of problem & he brought it to a jeweler for repair. The jeweler was such a jerk & laughed & said something like, "bah ha! it's just a cheap knockoff! go spend $20 and get another!" as though he thought Dad was unaware of its origins. Dad tried to explain he KNEW it was a fake, but the value was in its sentimentality, NOT in its quality, and could he please fix it anyway. Dude was a jerk & refused, again reiterating he could just go buy another (which...he couldn't. They bought them in another country & this was the early 90s, before online shopping was such a big thing) & even started laughing with a coworker about Dad being a rube, etc. What a jackhole, to be gaining such glee at thinking he 'caught' someone passing off a fake Rollie. Which, btw, never happened - they even tried to find one that had the name misspelled, a la 1980s era knockoffs like 'A.D.D.I.A.S', 'Channel', and 'Brad Sampson' branded items, to be more amusingly obvious. Alas, this was a time period when scammers actually started trying to make believable fakes. It took some doing (because he was incredibly embarrassed by the initial exchange), but we did eventually convince him to try again with a different jeweler, a mom & pop shop and to tell them immediately it was a sentimental thing, etc, to avoid them thinking he was trying to pass off a fake, blah blah blah, and a few years later, he did get his watched fixed. AFAIK, they still wear them to family functions as a private joke. 😄 Wildly curious if anyone has attempted to fake one of the ultra-thin Piaget watches...

From the vibe of the comments in general and even in the video, I get the idea that things like this seem pointless. I'm well out of the price bracket for anything like this in particular, and even if I could afford it, I wouldn't buy this specifically. But I don't care for the tone, in general, of "what's the point of a watch?" that I see, because the 'point' is one of uniqueness and distinctness of function. Phones, tablets, and computers all synchronize extremely accurate time-keeping methodologies by the use of the internet. It's something we have come to rely on, and it works well. But I still understand the desire to wear a device that does only the one job: to keep the time available to the user conveniently. Perhaps the watch is a wasteful product, because one could look at phone, tablet, computer, tv, or hanging wall-clock, but with the exception of the wall clock, the rest of those are cluttered interfaces which do more to distract than to inform. And perhaps these luxury chronometers are even more wasteful than their cheaper digital counterparts, but they also provide a meaningful, understandable relationship with the event(s) they track. You cannot see the phone, tablet, etc. working. Very few people actually understand the hardware functions of these devices. They are intricately invisible and well beyond the grasp of the masses. I don't intend to say that everyone looks at a mechanical watch and knows exactly what's happening inside, but I do intend to say that it makes its metric more apparent. The oscillations of a microprocessor-monitored quartz sliver are far less accessible, even if they were visible, than the intricate movement of wheels, springs, and gears that ma'kes chronometers like the one featured go. We have forgotten that we are physical. A touchscreen is convenient, but a button is inherently more satisfying to us, just because it's a button. Fidget toys are popular with many persons who don't require them medically because they are physically satisfying in a world from which we are increasingly isolated. Board- and card-games are increasingly reviving in popularity again after a brief slump wherein they were put on phones and computers, because while the electronic version is more convenient, maybe even more feature-rich, and often cheaper, it's physically less satisfying to roll imaginary dice by pressing a non-physical button, and hear the faux sounds of objects not really moving. In summary, people need physical objects and relationships with those objects. The more inherently approachable that relationship is, the more satisfying it is. It's easy to see the mechanical chronometer as over-priced and under-functional. But it's also vastly more meaningful, outside of the monetary investment made to acquire it, because it is tangible, approachable, and unique. Particularly with this example, the visible nature of the working watch becomes the very reason to want it; it represents the passage of time in an open, honest, and intimate way that a dollar-store timepiece, for all its accessibility, never can.

you don't know true prestige until you pay $5000 for two feet of copper speaker wires.

I thought my Longines was extremely thin, so hearing that Piaget had constructed a 2mm thick mechanical watch was mind-blowing. I have a feeling that no matter the case material, that watch is going to be delicate should the owner decide to wear it. The crystal is going to be thin, so an accidental bump against something would be very risky. Servicing? I suspect the watch as to be returned to Piaget for servicing, so expect to shell out big bucks for upkeep. I suspect most of these watches are going to extremely wealthy horological collectors who will maintain them in a collection for the bragging rights of owning the world's thinnest mechanical watch.

So, not available at my local big box store in time for Christmas

This can double as a [GOOD] advert for this gorgeous watch! Someone contact PiageT!

Marvelous beard my fellow beardsman.

YOOOOO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COVERING THIS!!!!!

More watch videos Simon 🙏

In the mean time the record was broken first by Bvlgari Octo Finissimo, and a few months later by Richard Mille RM UP-01 at only 1.75mm.🤯

Nice to see at least one watchmaker (even if unaffordable) wanting to make a thin watch. These days watches have gotten huge, thick and clunky. I have a watch from the mid 80s that is thinner than almost every watch today.

Awesome beard!

The Blohm & Voss BV141 would make a good subject for this channel.

I'd forgotten how difficult it can be to understand Simon as his voice tends to drop in volume toward the end of a phrase. He starts out loud enough, enunciating clearly but that quickly fades till he almost swallows his words before they leave his mouth.

Meanwhile, I'm happy with my cheap chinese "smart" watch, tells the time, shows message alerts, and tells me how fat I am, can't get a Rolex that does all that... :P

Bro I'd rather buy a house! 😂

Were you born in a barn Simon, close that damn door

That last joke literally earned my like…

Hmmm. Challenge accepted, Mr Piaget. I've been mulling over an idea I had in High School Chemistry class for a mechanical watch half a millimeter thick. Yes, it would be nearly unserviceable, but with water as a primary component, it wouldn't really need to be.

$430,000😲 the cost of the whole property of where I live, doesn't add up to$430,000

Horology, you get it or don't.

Quartz are more accurate sure but I don't want to change the batteries on shit because I never get around to it and it sits in a drawer somewhere instead of on my wrist. Mechanical requires a little maintenance to keep precise but I can keep up on that with little effort instead of taking a high end quartz to jeweler change the battery and remember to pick it up in a couple days.

Yessss yessss yessss WATCH STUFF LOL

I'm with the 'Happy Meal' watch, sorry. For all of you who want hyper expensive watches I have have some limited edition embossed toilet paper. $1000.00 a roll, limit 5 per customer. Don't miss out.

This is the ONLY video I’ve seen of Simons where he isn’t wearing a nice watch. Lol. For this video, and only this video.. Simon is sporting some crappy Apple Watch. It’s a shame, he usually has much better taste. There’s nothing wrong with buying a decent watch or five Simon, go for it!

Bad luck man. It's only 4 months after you put this out, and Bvlgari has the record now. Lol that'd be my luck as well.

This watch ad is great and all, but when do we get to the video?

1:07 There's a glitch in the matrix near Simon's right ear

Tourbillons look cool that’s their function lol

Let's see, a watch, a house, such a decision. Well, like the old boat adage says "If you have to ask, you can't afforrd."

Most chronometer watches and many uncertified watches well surpass chronometer standards

All that time spent researching for this video, and can’t even pronounce Tourbillon… 🤣

Interesting, I’ll take 3.

Right at the height of the pandemic this super expensive watch came out 😂 Idk why that’s funny to me

I own the watch in the video and I like it very much……. …..the Casio not the Piaget