Haute Complication: Hublot Big Bang Tourbillon Power Reserve 5 days In Colored Sapphire

A tourbillon is, in a pure sense, a regulating device and not a complication. While it does indeed not add an extra function to a watch, it is substantially more challenging to make than the regulating organs usually found inside a timepiece. Because of this, many rank the tourbillon among the complications. While in essence a classic creation dating back to the days of the pocket watch, brands like Richard Mille, Greubel Forsey, and Hublot have taken the lead by using the tourbillon in distinctly modern-day creations. A great example of this is the Big Bang Tourbillon Power Reserve 5 days in colored sapphire.

The Big Bang Tourbillon Power Reserve 5 days is powered by HUB6016, which gets its five-day power reserve from a single mainspring barrel. The mainspring barrel is connected with a gear train to the power reserve indicator at nine o’clock, which tells the remaining power by a disc that turns. The entire movement has a beautiful architecture to which Hublot applied a very avant-garde approach to skeletonization. At six o’clock, we find what is for many the main attraction of this movement, the tourbillon.

These Hublots also bring another ‘complication’ to the table that is even rarer than the ones found in its movement; the colored sapphire case. In recent years, Hublot has dominated the field of sapphire cased watches. Not only was the brand able to make them in (modest) volume, which is extremely challenging as the material is very hard to work with, but they also created them in colors never seen before. The Big Bang Tourbillon Power Reserve 5 days is available in red and blue sapphire, and what is most noticeable is that both colors are very vibrant. The brand even goes a step further and crafted some of the bridges of the movement out of colored sapphire. This adds additional ‘transparency’ to the skeletonized movement and further underscores what makes these watches truly complicated.