Rolex describes it new release, Deepsea Challenge, as “a watch that defies the limits.” That means depth and barometric pressure limits beyond engineering, as the Deepsea Challenge is designed to be able to operate at a depth of 11,000 meters — almost 7 miles — underwater. But you’d be forgiven for concluding that means the depth of logic too. Rolex has offered a watch rated to 3,900 meters ($12,950 Deepsea Sea-Dweller), far beyond human survival (the deepest sea voyage ever for a saturated diver, at in 1988, bottomed at a depth of 534 meters). So what could be the reason for the nearly tripling of a possibility that can only be experienced in theory, requiring a watch so large that it pushes another limit – that of wearability?
The answer Rolex can reasonably give is: because it can. But also, because it had to. The Deepsea Challenge is the culmination of a succession of super-deep watches that began in 1960, when the company sent an experimental watch, the Deep Sea Special, attached to the Trieste bathyscaphe en route to the bottom of the deep. The largest on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, reaches a depth of 10,911 meters (the watch, which has a giant bulb-shaped glass dome above its dial, works perfectly).
In 2012, filmmaker James Cameron dived to the bottom of the trench himself in the Deepsea Challenger submersible, with another, more modern, experimental Rolex externally mounted. In a sense, the new watch can be seen as part of Rolex’s unfinished business: Based on the watch that fell into the abyss with Cameron, it is finally on the market. what has been tested for six decades. As a manifestation of technical prowess, that really cannot be beat.
However, for a while, it looked as if it had ever happened. Even having invented the concept, Rolex is hardly alone in turning the puzzling depth of watches into sublime technical versatility. While a wide range of brands offer watches with resolutions of 1,000 meters or more, Omega really got into the fray in 2019 when it sent out its own watches. Seamaster test observed to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, attached to explorer Victor Vescovo’s submersible. Not only did this give Omega the victory in owning the watch with the deepest stroke – reaching 10,916 meters, surpassing Cameron (10,908 meters) by 8 meters – but Omega also developed a model that is commercially available. school. Seamaster Ultra Deep Propriced at £10,350 (approximately $11,883), as of earlier this year, but with a depth of 6,000 meters – an achievement that Rolex has now almost doubled.
The ultra-high pressure vessel was co-developed with Comex to test the waterproofing of the Oyster Perpetual Deepsea Challenge.Photo: Fred Merz / Rolex
