Bulgari are continue in their pursuit to create ever thinner watches. For 2025 they’re revisiting one of the watches that kicked off this journey for them in 2014, the Finissimo Tourbillon. Now presented as the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon with partially skeletonised display and a thickness of just 1.85mm, earning it a new world record for being the thinnest tourbillon wristwatch.
Honestly the precision required to produce the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon is mind boggling. To fit an entire rotating tourbillon, power barrel, gear train, hands, winding mechanism and all the other mechanics that go into a watch into a case just 1.85mm in thickness is madness. That’s basically a full millimetre thinner than a £1 coin and only 0.2mm thicker than a 1p piece. Plus Bulgari have managed to preserve the Octo’s signature design with its octagonal bezel and faceted angles.
Bulgari have created 10 world record Finissimo watches at this point so you should be familiar with how they construct there world beating timepieces. Basically, the caseback of the watch is doing double duty as the calibre’s mainplate, supporting the delicate components of the movement. As such, it has to be incredibly stiff and rigid as any flex could prove disastrous for the movement and snap the watch. Therefore, Bulgari have brought out the big guns by producing it from tungsten carbide, an incredibly tough, durable material used in high performance engineering tools.
In order to keep it lightweight, as if that’s a consideration when the whole thing this thin, the case middle, bezel and bracelet are produced from bead blasted titanium, which is what gives it a darker grey tone than steel watches. In order to match this darker tone, the hour and minute hands have a grey anthracite coating. They’re located on the partially skeletonised subdial at 2 o’clock, situated above the titular tourbillon at 5 o’clock.
The movement in the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon is the BVF 900 with manual winding and a 42-hour power reserve. That might not sound too impressive on paper but again, everything has to be contextualised with the fact that the watch is thinner than an After Eight mint. Plus it’s still a flying tourbillon movement to boot. While very few people will ever own one, or even be in the same room as one, it’s still exciting to see brands push the boundaries millimetre by millimetre.
Price and Specs:
More details at Bulgari.
