New Luxury Watch - The Rolex Milgauss

New to the Rolex luxury watch collection the Rolex Milgauss is named for its impressive ability to resist a magnetic field of 1,000 Gauss. You ask, “Why is that so important or impressive?” well, if you take a mechanical watch into a strong magnetic field, some of the parts in the movement become magnetized which causes problems; typically the watch will start to run quite fast and require demagnetization. The hairspring, made of an alloy called Nivarox,is particularly susceptible. A watch is normally considered “antimagnetic” (DIN 8309) if it can ignore 4,800 A/m. This works out to about 60 gauss, or 6% of what the new Rolex is rated for. Rolex achieved the superior rating of the Milgauss by encasing the movement in soft iron, which is known as a Faraday cage. They inturn introduced a new hairspring material, Parachrom-Blu, which is unaffected by magnetism.

The Milgauss comes in the new, slightly larger case size of 40mm, with the 3131 movement. There are white and black dial versions available, both with a nifty and surprisingly modern lightning shaped second hand and ‘ROLEXROLEXROLEX’ around the face on the chapter ring. One difference between the two versions is that the black dial has a sapphire crystal that is slightly green at an angle, as you can see from the image gallery on their site.