What We Know
Less than a year ago, Greubel Forsey discontinued the most emblematic pillar of its particularly well-finished watchmaking, the Balancier Contemporain. The Balancier is dead. Long live the Balancier. The new Balancier QM, that is. Very much grown out of the lessons, successes, and even the architecture of the Balancier Contemporain, the Balancier QM is the first to carry the brand’s new Qualité Musée standard.
While it looks somewhat different, with a floating balance cock and rearranged location of the power reserve, the Balancier QM is a familiar watch to anyone who has seen a GF before. That’s because the movement borrows much of its architecture from the old Balancier Contemporain, as well as its identical sizing (39.6mm by 12.25mm for both models), now in white gold.
What the Balancier QM is instead is more of a codification of a new Qualité Musée (QM) certification for this and future GF watches. Like the Patek seal, Qualité Fleurier, Breguet Hallmark, and other in-house standards (all three of which have also just added chronometric certification not found here), this guarantees a certain—particularly extreme—level of hand-finishing quality.
Finishing has been one of the key raisons d’être for GF since its founding. There’s been an “if you know, you know” quality to the brand that signaled that, included in their extreme pricing, you get extreme finishing from the brand. That was a novelty in the past, but now it’s a “must” for any high-end brand to compete at the top end. The brand mentions in the press release that they have a team dedicated just to finishing research in their Experimental Watch Technology wing of the company. The result, now given a name, is always pretty stunning. For instance, the escape wheel here is polished on both sides, and the pallet stones have a rounded shape that’s not necessary but shows extra attention to detail. The balance arm (no longer a bridge) features seven different hand finishing: rocking to round to a mirror polish, a black polished flat at the jewel end, spotting, circular graining, hand polishing on the flanks, and straight graining. The balance is given extra-large 0.40mm bevels.
The caseback used to be one of the less interesting parts of the Balancier Contemporain—not that it wasn’t well-finished, but it just didn’t have much to see. Now, on the German silver three-quarter plate, you can see a grand sonnerie-style winding click with an arbor rotating around a jewel with its own gold chaton. Teeth on the winding wheels are matte and beveled, and the rest of the gear is black, polished. There’s a small view of the rest of the movement’s going train, though the 3Hz balance and the two coaxial series-coupled barrels (for 72 hours of power reserve) with relief engraving of the GF name are both at the front.
The Hand Made 1 and Hand Made 2 were the benchmarks for the brand in the past, but the benchmark didn’t have a name before. Now it does. But also drawn from the HM1 and HM2 is the newly commercialized in-house hairspring production, which will make its way into every watch from the brand moving forward. That’s a level that most small brands have yet to be able to crack.
The inaugural launch is limited to 33 pieces, and the price is on request. According to a few sources, that price lands somewhere north of CHF 250,000.
What We Think
This is a beautiful watch, and it is what I think of when I think of Greubel Forsey. While the Balancier Convexe seemed to be a play to try to pick up collectors who can afford a Richard Mille but want something a bit more “watch guy-y,” the Balancier Contemporain largely had everything you’d want out of a daily-wearable watch for a person with a few tens of millions in the bank (so long as you didn’t take it swimming). One of my only frustrations is that the watch was more party in the front and business in the back, and if finishing is the point on a watch like this, you’d like to see a bit more. The new Balancier QM gives you that now, too.
Greubel Forsey has always been a great watch for the well-heeled “in” crowd of watch enthusiasts. Until Mark Zuckerberg started wearing a handmade watch, you could nearly guarantee that the person wearing a Greubel Forsey was someone who had been into watches for quite a long, long time. The quality has always been evident, but it was also subtle to the uninformed. Then there was the fact that many of their watches were just very large, partially due to the complexity of mechanics and partially due to the fact that to create physical depth and impressive finishing, you need a bigger movement. While the new Balancier QM isn’t by any means thinner or smaller than its predecessor, it does everything right that you’d want from a GF otherwise.
The Basics
Brand: Greubel Forsey
Model: Balancier QM
Reference Number: GF09CM
Diameter: 39.6mm
Thickness: 12.25mm (9.45mm not counting crystal)
Case Material: White gold
Dial Color: Rhodium-colored gold
Indexes: Engraved and lacquered
Lume: None
Water Resistance: 30m
Strap/Bracelet: Hand-sewn textured rubber; white gold pin buckle
The Movement
Caliber: Balancier QM
Functions: Hours, minutes, small seconds, power reserve
Diameter: 33mm
Thickness: 9.4mm
Power Reserve: 72 hours
Winding: Manual
Frequency: 3Hz
Jewels: 34 olive-domed jewels in gold chatons
Chronometer Certified: No
Additional Details: 298 parts finished to the brand’s newly codified standard
Pricing & Availability
Price: Upon request
Availability: Through Greubel Forsey authorized retailers
Limited Edition: Yes, 33 pieces
For more, click here.
