Imagine you’re a product manager at a leading Swiss luxury watchmaking maison. You’re leading a brainstorming session to expand on an idea that your engineers have had for a technical breakthrough. This breakthrough is a feature that could redefine how the world thinks about mechanical watches. Now your task is to figure out what the actual product—every aspect of the watch and how you’re going to market and sell it—is going to be. At the end of the session, you have the outline of a product plan that builds upon the breakthrough feature to create a watch that can be your brand’s next great model:

The Panerai Submersible Elux LAB-ID—a Swiss luxury watch with a breakthrough feature that could redefine how the world thinks about mechanical watches—is exactly none of those things.

Even by luxury watch standards, it’s extraordinarily expensive, at $107,600 (EU price: 109 900 €). Its case is ceramic-titanium and it has a rubber strap. Subjectively, it’s anything but sleek and is massive on the wrist, with a case diameter of 49 mm (1.93”) and a thickness of 21.6 mm (0.85”).

If you’re looking for a comparable mechanical watch, a reasonable marker would be the Rolex Deepsea Challenge.

Its size is similar to that of the Elux LAB-ID, with a 50 mm (1.97”) diameter case and 23 mm (0.91”) thickness. It’s a “superlative chronometer”, so Rolex guarantees its accuracy to -2/+2 seconds/day. It has a brushed titanium case and bracelet and is honestly about as sleek as one can imagine given its unique feature, which is that it’s the only mechanical watch on the planet rated to a depth of 11,000 meters (36,089 feet). And it does all that for a price of $29,100 (EU price: 28 300 €).

So the comparably-sized Deepsea Challenge is as accurate as any mechanical watch, is made of precious metal, is attractive for what it does, has a feature that is unique in the world, and costs less than a third of the Elux LAB-ID. And yet it’s the latter that might represent the future of watches. Why? To answer that, we first have to understand why many mechanical watch aficionados disdain smartwatches.

Whenever the excellent watch coverage site Hodinkee runs an article on the Apple Watch, it’s predictable: mechanical watch enthusiasts flood the comments to register their complaint that the Apple Watch is not, in fact, a watch.

Strictly speaking, in a linguistic sense, they’re wrong. The OED defines “watch” as:

Is the Apple Watch a “time-piece” that is a “wrist-watch” and is “battery-driven”? Yes. It’s a watch.

That being said, while the purists are technically incorrect, they do have a point. In 2015, Apple launched their short-lived Apple Watch Edition, in 18 karat gold, at a price of $17,000 (equivalent to $23,329 / 19 734 € in 2026). In 2023 they announced it was obsolete and would no longer support it. That’s a useful lifespan of eight years. Meanwhile, someone who bought a Rolex in 2015 would, in 2023—at the time of Apple’s announcement of the Edition’s permanent obsolescence—be two years away from the first recommended service interval for their watch.

In other words, while the Apple Watch may be a watch, it’s not an heirloom. It’s disposable.

This isn’t a complaint. The Apple Watch is at the cutting edge of wearable technology, and that technological edge requires constant sharpening. It would be surprising if it weren’t obsolete after eight years. It’s not—nor is it designed to be—an heirloom.

And that brings to the Submersible Elux LAB-ID. (By the way, Panerai, you need to work on your naming. Just saying.) What is its unique feature, and why might that feature point the way to a possible future for mechanical watches?

The unique feature of the Elux LAB-ID is that it integrates electrical functionality without compromising the fundamental mechanical nature of the watch and without subjecting it to the inevitable obsolescence of electronic smartwatches.

Like any mechanical watch, the Elux LAB-ID stores its energy in mainsprings that are wound up, either automatically (by the motion of wearing the watch) or manually, by turning the crown. Each mainspring is contained in a barrel, or a small drum. The Elux LAB-ID has two barrels that provide 72 hours’ power reserve for timekeeping. Nothing unusual so far.

Where the Elux LAB-ID diverges is that it has an additional four barrels, for a total of six. Those four barrels provide energy to a system of 160 micro-LEDs located on the dial, hands, and bezel. Pressing a button on the side of the case lights up the micro-LEDs:

The thing to keep in mind is that there is no battery here. None. This is a mechanical system powering electrical components. Nor are there—as far as can be seen—any components that depend on anything external, like a smartphone app or a communications protocol. The Elux LAB-ID is in no danger of technological obsolescence.

For the horologists reading this, yes, it’s correct to say this type of electromechanical fusion watch isn’t completely new. De Bethune has delivered multiple models of their DB28GS watch—for example, the Grand Bleu—that have a similar feature, though it lights up for less than a minute, and in pictures, at least, doesn’t seem as dramatic as the Elux LAB-ID (this picture is of another De Bethune with the same system, the Yellow Submarine):

And then there’s Ressence, with their futuristic Type 2 watch featuring the eCrown, which works in tandem with their Type 2’s mechanical movement to keep it accurate when it may drift or when the mechanical movement shuts down to save power, as well as changing between time zones and syncing with a smartphone app via Bluetooth:

Note, though, that in shutting down the mechanical movement to save energy, or in correcting it when the mechanically generated time drifts, the eCrown is behaving, more or less, like a quartz watch in control of a mechanical watch. Is it cool? Undeniably. Would I wear a Ressence Type 2 on my wrist? With delight. Is it a purely mechanical movement? No.

(There are more such watches that lie somewhere along this continuum: the Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Nuit Lumineuse, the HYT H4 Metropolis, and the Urwerk EMC, to name three.)

Yes, the Elux LAB-ID is expensive, massive on the wrist, and subjectively not the most attractive watch out there. At more than three times the price of Rolex’s “watch us cook” model, the Deepsea Challenge, it’s difficult to justify on a rational basis. And it’s not the first watch to fuse the electrical and the mechanical. So it would be easy to dismiss the Elux LAB-ID—but we shouldn’t. Why? Because the Elux LAB-ID points the way to a third category of watch that lies between the purely mechanical and the smartwatch.

Panerai makes heirloom-quality watches, and the Elux LAB-ID qualifies. It has a mechanical movement that should stand the test of time. It has electrical components, but they aren’t tied to an app that may or may not be updated, nor do they use a communication protocol that might not even be around in 20 years. It doesn’t have a battery. It’s not a quartz movement controlling a mechanical movement. In short, it’s an heirloom-quality mechanical watch from a top-tier Swiss maison that includes electrical functionality to accomplish something useful.

This is where it gets fun. So far, the best we’ve seen from an electromechanical fusion watch is just past the novelty stage. Lights are useful, but the passive Super LumiNova Grade X2 is commonly available, orders of magnitude cheaper, and apparently capable of glowing all night. But much more seems possible.

Imagine an electromechanical fusion watch in which the electrical component is capable of controlling the mechanical movement. The Ressence Type 2 does this today, and Seiko’s Spring Drive has been around since 2005. With that as the basis:

In my dreams, a company with the cachet of Rolex or Omega implements this, but as a two-part design. Imagine an ultra-thin mechanical movement, self-contained in its own case, with an optional auxiliary case locking onto it from below and providing electrical / electronic functionality if so desired. This would have numerous benefits:²

If such a watch—more accurately, a system of watches—were priced at the high end of the mass market (to be expected from maisons like Rolex and Omega), and done well, it could light the way forward. So to speak.

Most of us are unlikely to buy one of these watches, which today are aimed squarely at wealthy enthusiasts. But we can take lessons from this exercise:

If you’re buying any watch as an heirloom, insist that your manufacturer make explicit commitments. Specifically, you need both replacement parts and service documentation to be available for decades to come.

When it comes to breakthrough technologies, for most buyers, the smartest move is to let early adopters fund the experiments. By the second or third generation—if the product gets there—you’ll know whether the new technology is a standard or has been abandoned.

If you own a mechanical watch, how long do you expect it to be in use? Years? Decades? Or do you see it as an heirloom to be passed down across multiple generations?