Scenario: You’re a watch collector; you’ve amassed a decent collection of watches, but now you’re ready for something different. I suspect that’s where Ressence as a brand comes in. There’s literally nothing like the Ressence Type 1 on the market today. With a simple motto of “Beyond Hands”, Ressence has taken traditional watchmaking and blasted it into the 21st Century and beyond.

To go “Beyond Hands”, Ressence has built a module known as the Ressence Orbital Convex System, or ROCS for short. This contains multiple gears that is driven by a heavily modified ETA 2892. On the dial, there are multiple interplanetary discs that display the hours, seconds, and day of the week, while the main dial displays the minutes. All of these dials are in constant rotation, hence “Orbital”, and which means that the watch face is always different throughout the day. If this sounds complicated, it really isn’t, as the highly legible dial makes telling the time quite an intuitive process.

The watch is 42mm in diameter, 11mm thick, and due to its mostly titanium construction, is only 70g in weight. Its short wired lugs that curve slightly downwards make it an incredibly comfortable watch to wear, and one that can easily slide under a cuff. Negatives? The complicated ROCS module saps more power from the standard ETA, with power reserve down to 36 hours. The watch has almost no water resistance at 1ATM, so take it off before washing your hands. The most annoying thing is changing the time, as you’re required to turn the entire caseback multiple times. However, the latest models have sorted out this issue with the inclusion of a handle.

At around $21000, the Ressence Type 1 is certainly not a cheap watch. You could buy a Hulk, or a Batman. But really, do you want to have the same watch as every other guy at a GTG? Didn’t think so. Go beyond hands.