Richard Mille RM032 Chronograph Diver AL TI

If ever there was a luxury sports watch destined to start an argument, it's the Richard Mille RM032 Chronograph Diver . Released in 2011, the RM032 Diver brazenly ignores most of the requirements for a diving tool watch: and yet that's exactly what it is. So the question is: would you trust it with your life, 300 m beneath the waves?
In reality, of course, the kind of person who would wear a £100k-plus novelty watch on a diving mission probably deserves to discover just how little the RM032 Chrono Diver does when it's a long way away from daylight. But then that's not what the watch is for. It's for wearing in the club, or on deck, where its funky functions are clearly visible and easy to enjoy.
Before we get into those functions, let's back up a little and look at what a dive watch is supposed to do. It must, above all else, be legible. Its dial and bezel are the twin instruments by which a diver is able to time crucial elements of the dive. Now, at 300 m, there's very little available light. 300 m puts you 100 m into the 'dysphotic', or twilight zone of the ocean, where very little light penetrates. Trying to read a Richard Mille dial at this depth, with all its skeletonisation and extra indicators, would be like trying to listen to a Bach fugue through 300 m of cotton wool.
Traditional dive watches have dials adorned by large 12 o'clock markers, giant triangles or clearly-lumed pips at the reference point on the bezel, and extremely clear hour indices. And that's it. The Richard Mille RM032 Chronograph Diver doesn't have any lume on its bezel. But it does feature a clutter of extra indicators and functions, all cool and none useful when you're exploring the twilight zone. There's a date window, a tachymeter, a day window, a date window, a flyback chronograph hand, and a running indicator (a dial at 3 o'clock, which essentially shows that the movement is working properly).
You get the picture. Given that the lume is applied only to hour markers, hour and minute hands, and the running indicator, but not to the unidirectional, rotatable, locking bezel, the RM032 diver has about as much application at 300 m as a newspaper would. But that, as we've seen, is not the point. Richard Mille sometimes builds watches with real-world applications, but mainly he creates masterpieces of fanciful problem-solving. And the RM032 Chronograph Diver is no exception to this habit.
The mechanical accomplishments of this luxury watch are every bit as extreme as you'd expect from a Richard Mille. And they're all focused on getting the watch to work safely at massive oceanic depths. The chronograph, for example, is protected from accidental activation (big pressure changes, such as those experienced by deep-sea divers, can press the pushers on a chrono movement) thanks to a unique locking crown. The lock seals both crown and chrono pushers in place, protecting the movement from the effects of pressure and maximising waterproofing.
As I've heavily hinted at, the 50 mm titanium case (it's also available in white gold or red gold) is waterproof to the standard diver's depth of 300 m. It takes 830 different machining operations just to manufacture the tripartite case, which must protect the skeletonised movement from the effects of deep-sea work. The bezel has a double-locking system so you can't accidentally move it once dive time has been set (though, again, with no lumed reference point on the bezel, you won't be able to see it properly when you get down into the depths).
The movement's annual calendar function ensures semi-instantaneous change of month and date. The running indicator moves at 2 rpm, so it's nice and easy to see that the RMAC2 automatic winding calibre is operating as it should.
The RM032 Chronograph Diver has sapphire crystal, front and back, and is presented on a rubber diving strap secured with a titanium buckle.
Richard Mille's website defines the RM032 as an 'automatic chronograph created for deep-sea diving'. I'm going to go out on a very small limb and say that this is nonsense. This isn't a tool watch, but then it isn't supposed to be. It is, like every Richard Mille, a superb piece of engineering whose applications are better suited to the dinner table, or to daily wear, than for going out in the field. And at 50 mm, it may be a luxury watch you don't even wear, but keep in your display case to start conversations. Whether those conversations turn out to be amiable discussions of the skeletonised dial, or heated arguments about what a dive watch actually is, is up to you.
Image Credit – officialwatches.com vedere di piu rolex imitazioni e Hermes H-our