Watch companies create concept products to act as halos for the brand, to infuse the regular production models with new technologies, to break records, and to challenge rival companies.

While the impetus driving Bulgari to be the thinness king is unclear. What’s clear is that amongst the brands that have made record-breaking thin watches — Piaget, Vacheron Constantin, Richard Mille, Bulgari — it’s an area of core competency where Bulgari continues to break the most records (thinnest: tourbillon, minute repeater, self-winding watch, self-winding tourbillon, chronograph GMT, tourbillon chronograph, and perpetual calendar).

At just 1.70 mm thick, the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC represents the thinnest mechanical timepiece ever made — and it’s COSC-certified to boot.

The watch bests the previous record holder, Richard Mille’s RM UP-01 Ultraflat Ferrari (1.75 mm) timepiece, by a barely distinguishable 0.05 mm. To put it in perspective, you’re not going to be able to see the difference with the naked eye, and you will not even be able to measure the case thickness accurately with any standard caliper, instead, you need something like a micrometer (micrometer screw caliper).

Adding further context, the 1.75 mm thick RM UP-01 Ultaflat Ferrari has a 51 mm diameter case whereas the 1.70 mm record-breaking Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC case measures a far more wearable 40 mm diameter.

Taking Bulgari’s old record breaker (at 1.80 mm), which was the thinnest in the world until the RM Up-01 arrived in July of 2022, the engineers kept the titanium case, and the 170-component hand-wound 4Hz caliber BVL 180, which has a 50-hour power reserve and is just 1.5 mm thick (with a tungsten carbide back), and reduced only the thickness of the sapphire crystal by one-tenth of a millimeter.

Due to the extreme thinness, setting the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC is as you’d expect, not as easy as a standard timepiece and so Bulgari created a dedicated case with a digital readout that once you placed the watch in it “the desired time is then programmed, and the adjustment cycle launched at the touch of a button. In a matter of seconds, the watch is perfectly adjusted and wound with impeccable precision.”

So while shaving the sapphire crystal down a tenth of a millimeter may not be considered innovative (depending on who you ask), the digital time-setting case certainly is.

The Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC is limited to 20 pieces at a not-so-thin retail of $529,000.

 

Photos by Bulgari.