This 250-Year-Old Brand Just Reinvented the Mechanical Watch

Breguet’s very good year continues.

The storied brand has been celebrating its milestone 250th anniversary all year by reminding everyone that it is one of the most formidable watchmakers in the game.

From the magnificent GPHG Award-winning Classique Souscription 2025 to the brand’s first-ever flying tourbillon in the Classique Tourbillon Sidéral 7255 to the groundbreakingly accurate Classique 7225, Breguet has been kicking ass and taking names all year in what has been the brand’s most impressive run since the days when its founder Abraham Louis-Breguet was inventing the tourbillon and making watches for Marie Antoinette.

Remarkably, it seems Breguet has actually been holding back, as it’s saved its most impressive 250th Anniversary release for last with the incredible Expérimentale 1, which can best be described as a reinvention of the mechanical watch.

Breguet

250 years in the making

Like most people, when I hear “Breguet,” I think of the tourbillon, arguably the most enduring of the brand’s many contributions to horology. Breguet’s latest model, the Expérimentale 1, has a tourbillon, but one unlike anything anyone’s ever seen before. In fact, that goes for the rest of the escapement, too.

Just a few weeks ago, Breguet launched the Classique 7225 with the latest evolution of the brand’s seldom-used magnetic pivot escapement that allowed the watch to achieve a new mechanical watch accuracy standard of +/-1 second per day.

The Expérimentale 1 represents the next leap in Breguet’s ongoing experiments with magnetic escapements, and it’s a big one. The new watch combines a 10Hz tourbillon with a magnetic constant-force escapement. There’s a lot of horological buzzwords there, so let me try and break this down in relatively simple terms.

Virtually all mechanical watches run on the Swiss lever escapement, which releases energy from the mainspring through a gear train to a toothed escape wheel, which drives a jewel-tipped pallet fork that in turn drives a balance wheel.

The balance wheel is equipped with a spring and oscillates back and forth, utilizing the converted mainspring energy, which gives the watch its beating heart and regulates the timekeeping. A tourbillon adds complexity by putting the entire escapement and balance assembly inside a cage that constantly rotates, theoretically negating the effect of gravity on the escapement.

Breguet

In Breguet’s crazy new escapement, there are two escape wheels stacked on top of each other, each fitted with a magnetic track. In between them is an intermediate stop wheel to prevent unwanted jumps, along with the pallet fork, which has swapped out its usual jewel tips for a pair of magnets. This allows the fork and escape wheels to do their usual dance without any friction. Instead, electromagnetic force does all of the pushing that would normally require parts of the escapement to physically push each other.

Normally, the amplitude of an escapement decreases as a watch’s power reserve dwindles. But because the magnetic force of the escapement here is not dependent on the energy coming from the mainspring (mainsprings, in this case, as there are two providing a three-day power reserve), it delivers a constant amplitude throughout the power reserve, thus resulting in a constant-force escapement.

The magnetic escapement also allows Breguet to separate the impulses sent to the balance from the rest of the gear train, allowing the tourbillon to be set at a much higher frequency than usual. It oscillates at an astounding 10Hz, a first for Breguet that is also four times the rate of a typical tourbillon and double the rate of a normal “high-beat” escapement, such as the 5Hz oscillator found in Zenith’s El Primero movements. 

To prevent the magnets in the escapement from messing with the beat rate, Breguet has kitted out the escapement and tourbillon with non-magnetic components. The balance spring is silicon, and most other parts are titanium or nivagauss.

Breguet

With the combination of a 10Hz tourbillon with a magnetic constant-force escapement, Breguet has effectively slayed the three dragons of mechanical watch imprecision: gravity (negated by the tourbillon), inconsistent amplitude (solved by the magnetic constant-force escapement) and shock (the 10Hz speed of the oscillator allows for much quicker stabilization following knocks and bumps).

This all sounds good in theory, but it’s nothing but fancy horological nerdspeak unless it’s actually applicable in a real-world setting. Thankfully, it very much is. Breguet guarantees accuracy on the new Cal. 7250 movement to +/-1 second in a 24-hour period, effectively making the Expérimentale 1 the most accurate mechanical watch you can buy.

Here’s to the next 250 years

While the movement is the headline news here, it’s really only part of the story. The rest has to do with the Expérimentale 1’s design language and what it represents for the future of Breguet.

The 43mm Breguet Gold case of the new watch is based on Breguet’s sporty Marine line, but with significant changes. The lugs are far more angular and are partly skeletonized, with their inner gold inlays given a blue ALD treatment.

The bold six-lug setup features central lugs that house a brand-new quick-release mechanism for the integrated rubber strap. A dramatic box-shaped sapphire crystal is equipped with both anti-reflective and hydrophobic coatings, the latter appealing to the watch’s surprising 100m of water resistance. Believe it or not, it seems like Breguet really wants people to go swimming in this thing.

Breguet

A sapphire crystal on the caseback allows for admiration of the movement, which is also made of Breguet gold, while a sapphire dial gives a full view of the caliber and its blue ALD-treated bridges from the front. The dial’s regulator setup was inspired by a 19th-century Breguet pocket watch and features the seconds and tourbillon at 12:00, offset minutes, and hours at 6:00.

Adding to the watch’s surprising sportiness, the three regulator scales are all fully lumed with Super-LumiNova, as are the tips of the hour and minute hands. The design overall is far more contemporary and angular than I can recall ever seeing from Breguet, yet it still manages to incorporate many of the brand’s design hallmarks, including Breguet hands, Breguet numerals and a fluted caseband.

Pricing and availability

Prior to this year, I think a lot of people were sleeping on Breguet. There was constant chatter in the watch community about how the Swatch Group didn’t know what to do with the brand, how their watches don’t hold their value, how Breguet had lost its way, yada yada yada.

Well, I think it’s safe to say that Breguet has shut up its critics. This year has been nothing but a murderer’s row of incredible watches from the brand, and pieces like the Expérimentale 1 show that Breguet is still a leading innovator in the space and is more than equipped to go toe-to-toe with the Pateks, Vacherons and Langes of the world.

As for the Expérimentale 1 itself, the watch is the first in what will be an ongoing Expérimentale series from Breguet where the brand shows off its latest R&D victories. This first edition, a halo piece for Breguet, is limited to 75 individually numbered pieces and is priced at CHF 320,000 (~$398,000).

Breguet

Breguet Expérimentale 1

Specs

Case Size	43.5mm
Movement	Breguet Cal. 7250 manual-wind tourbillon
Water Resistance	100m

• $398,000 at Breguet

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