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When buying a fine watch, is it better to choose a universal or self-produced center?

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In the past, it was customary for most watch brands to purchase finished cores from companies that specialized in making cores for their watches. This was because it was much cheaper to buy generic hearts in bulk, so few brands emphasized the in-house made hearts in their watches. However, the generic cores sold by these companies are so common in the marketplace that almost all brands carry the same core at a given price point,TUDOR Black Bay M7941A1A0RU-0003 making it easy to "clash" and even affecting the perceived value of the watch.

Why didn't watch brands tend to develop their own movements in the past? As we mentioned above, in-house production requires more sophisticated and expensive equipment and R&D teams, as well as more and better material supplies. The materials, the skills of the people and the precision equipment are all essential.

Moreover, the tools used to make the cores sometimes need to be handmade according to one's own needs, and it is not easy to find experienced watchmakers. Even if a brand spends a lot of money on the precision equipment needed to produce a movement,TUDOR Ranger M79950-0001 and finds a team of watchmakers capable of making and assembling movements, it is unlikely that it will be able to produce a new movement right away. Rather, it takes several years of research and development, design and production. After completion, it has to undergo a long period of internal validation and testing to achieve normal stable running time before it can be released to the market. Mechanical movements are very demanding in terms of stability and cannot tolerate any malfunctions. This is also the reason why we see that those brands with very strong watchmaking strength sometimes still need to outsource the procurement of mechanical centers.

For all these reasons, the production of in-house cores has become a costly threshold. As a result, in the past, most brands have preferred to buy market-tested general-purpose cores from external companies rather than take the risk of developing their own cores.

However, the "proliferation" of general-purpose machines has led to the market's growing perception that such watches with general-purpose movements lack sincerity and technical strength. The plain view is that a watch with a universal movement is a "downer" and does not match the value of the expensive price tag it carries.

As a result, in recent years, there has been a rush to "get on with" the development and use of new movements in the Swiss watch industry. However, as the new self-produced movements have not been proven for as long as the universal movements, will they be as flawed as the 2500 movements introduced by Omega? Only time will tell. Of course, in the past few years, when many brands tried to launch new in-house movements, most of them promised consumers to extend the warranty period of their new movements.

Brands with relatively affordable watches, such as Tudor, have also begun to join the ranks of in-house production in recent years. Currently, the brand maintains a strategy of using both in-house and general-purpose movements, although the models equipped with in-house movements are more expensive.

The situation in today's watchmaking world is very different. More and more watch brands are emphasizing that their watches are equipped with "in-house" movements. Consumers' eyes tend to light up when they see this keyword, and they have a higher respect for the brand's standard of craftsmanship. There are a few big brands with a long history that have been known for making machine centers since the old days, including Audemars Piguet, Piaget, and so on. As for the historic Breguet is also a brand that boasts of making its own machine centers, after all, they inherited the craftsmanship lineage of Breguet's masters. However, there are also criticized, like Cartier's own 1847 heart is considered by many to be not as well polished as the previously adopted general-purpose ETA heart.

In a narrower sense, an in-house center is one that is made in-house by the brand's own watchmakers using in-house equipment. Therefore, if the parts are not produced by the brand itself, it is not in line with the definition of in-house movement. However, there are still some models on the market that are labeled as in-house, and sometimes consumers are confused as to whether they are in-house or not. For example, sometimes a brand will claim to have "designed" an in-house movement, but they did design the construction and function of the movement, but they didn't produce the parts themselves. This is not a true self-produced core in the narrowest sense of the word. In other cases, the brand buys a basic general-purpose core and adds complex functional modules to it, kind of like buying a semi-finished product and then processing it into the final product. Therefore, in the same narrow sense, this kind of processed movement can hardly be regarded as a pure self-produced movement.

Consumers have many factors to consider when buying a watch, among which stable quality and reasonable price are relatively important factors. These two points can be satisfied in the use of general-purpose heart products. Therefore, for the market, as long as the watch operates normally, does not often have problems, and the starting price is satisfactory, then whether the watch is equipped with the brand's self-produced or outsourced general-purpose movement, this needs to weigh the price and the risk of stability in the future.

However, for watch enthusiasts, they often tend to pursue a narrowly defined in-house movement. Because that allows people to experience the complete craftsmanship level of a brand, a sense of professionalism from scratch. Therefore, those watch lovers who pursue the homemade movement are sometimes not necessarily motivated by quality or "face value", but more like to get a kind of spiritual fulfillment, as well as when communicating and interacting with their watch friends, wearing a watch equipped with homemade movement will make the watch owner feel that his or her own connoisseurship taste is not bad.

So should you increase your budget for a watch in pursuit of an in-house movement or not? Of course, there is no standard answer to this question, and it all depends on what the consumers themselves care about. Of course, everyone's budget is different; however, we don't have to make up our own conclusions like "homemade center = higher grade watch". There are still a lot of big brands that don't necessarily carry a narrowly defined in-house movement, but their quality and craftsmanship are still appreciated. Even last year's hot FURLAN MARRI watch is equipped with a quartz movement, the price of more than three thousand yuan, but still by the secondary market speculation to nearly 20,000 yuan.

Therefore, the pursuit of homemade movement is perhaps more of a need than a necessity, and there is no absolute superiority or inferiority between it and the universal movement. As long as the watch itself is to your liking, and you have no problems wearing it, then whether or not it is equipped with an in-house movement is a secondary issue.