There’s one aspect in which quartz watches will never trump their mechanical counterparts: engineering. The craftsmanship and beauty of an analog timepiece’s movement, rather than its ability to tell the time accurately, is what makes it so desirable–and expensive. With Hublot’s Big Bang MECA-10 ($20,000), Hublot takes this philosophy and rubs it in with an internal mechanism inspired by Meccano, a children’s construction toy. The manual-wind movement has a power reserve of 10 days and it reminds you when you need to rewind in a big way. A ratchet below the 12 and a circular-saw-like cog above the 6 both denote how many days are left before you need to wind the chunky gear-like crown. An indicator near the 3 turns red when winding is imminently required. Visible screws flaunt themselves on the bezel, while its 223 clockwork components are visible through the 45mm face and transparent backplate. The “All Black” edition celebrates 10 years of Hublot building watches that break design tradition. Here, it’s the view that it’s difficult to check the time on a black watch with black hands on a black dial. What’s very un-Meccano-like are the materials used: micro-blasted gray titanium for the regular model, and polished black ceramic for this editions which is limited to 500 units. Kids’ toys were never built this well.
