Deep within Rolex's landmark Geneva HQ is usually a one.3 tonne lump of stainless steel. Somewhat unprepossessing from the outside, inside is a hostile microcosm.

The tank simulates pressure at 16,000ft below sea degree and it is actually inside that Rolex's Deepseacheap luxury watchesare tested before release onto the market.

From deep sea diving to your morning shower

It can be, potentially, an costly process. The smallest flaw in every watch's construction will make it explode, so it pays to produce sure almost everything is right before undergoing this hyperbaric assault.

But this also means the company has, for decades, been able to supply specialist pieces for divers functioning for the likes of Comex, the underwater engineering firm whose elite members hold the world record for the deepest saturation dives.

Rolex can also claim credibility for the wearer whose depths rarely surpass that of his morning shower. In fact, just about every Rolex is tested to a depth 25% greater than that stated over the dial.

And that's by no means the only test a view might go by. Rolex, for instance, puts its Oysterlock bracelets as a result of 26 distinctive kinds of drop tests; the fastening is opened and closed tens of 1000s of times; it can be immersed in salt and sandy water and in chlorine solutions.

Taking testing to the extreme

"Shock, acidity, temperature, magnetism, legibility... all the variables that might affect arolex view for sale's performance really need to be tested for," says Jean-Paul Girardin, vice president of Breitling. "These tests must comply with regulations local and global, because our customers travel."

"The extra extreme the conditions a watch has to operate in, the a lot more extreme testing has to be. We tested our Emergency observe to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four degress Fahrenheit), for example - that would freeze the oils in any normal view. There was no test at all for the transmitter batteries we developed for the same piece, so you finish up establishing your own standard. You would like a lot of skills outside of watchmaking: mathematicians, physicists, chemists..."

Life is crude

And, occasionally, a large steel hammer to hit your view with, over and over. Dubbed the 'sheep's foot test' by those while in the small business, this is among the oldest but still most important of trials for many Swiss timepieces.

"It's a pretty crude test. People today think you're kidding when they see it: 'what, you're gonna whack that extremely expensive observe?'," says Theodore Diehl, horologist for Richard Mille. "But it's no significantly less important for being crude. Life is crude, right after all. You drop your watch on a concrete floor and the result isn't subtle."

Which has a watch predicated about the really idea of toughness, Casio's G-Shock similarly goes by way of a barrage of tests.

Prototypes underwent a rather rudimentary trial by height when their designers dropped them from ever taller heights on the Japanese brand's R&D making.

Indeed, such has become the fame from the watch's robustness that there is certainly a YouTube subculture featuring amateur tests of owners' very own invention, among them shooting with the watch and driving more than it in a Hummer.

Going above and beyond

Certainly the shift to ever higher performance means thatcheap omega watchesincreasingly surpass the tests they must go through to meet COSC certification as being a chronometer. COSC, the Controle Officiel Suisse des Chronometres, is the body responsible for the accuracy and precision of Swiss watches.

Omega, for instance, had to get the job done with the younger Swiss-government METAS agency to certificate its Master Co-axial movement because their precision standards had been that much higher.