Review: Zeroo Time T4 “The Archer”

In March of 2017, at a Christie’s auction in Dubai, a Richard Mille RM 012 sold, with fees, for over half a million dollars. The 2006 watch, replete with its signature tonneau case and skeletonised tourbillon movement, smashed the estimate and became a benchmark for Richard Mille’s status as a collector’s brand. All very well for the lucky few with a half-mill to spend, but what about the rest of us who only have a fraction of that? Well, that same year marked the founding of Zeroo Time, a Japanese outfit that decided to offer 80% of the experience of that RM 012 for well under a percent of the price. Have they succeeded?

The T4’s Design

This is the Zeroo Time T4, and it’s safe to say the inspiration for this watch is really, pretty obvious. It’s not a fake watch—it’s a unique design—but the cues are clear to see. What this means is an opportunity for people who have no hope of affording a Richard Mille to enjoy the aesthetic and even the complication without having to sell one—or probably both—of their kidneys.

This isn’t Zeroo Time’s first timepiece. The Japanese company started first with a fashion watch, before upping the ante with a mechanical moonphase in a classic design, and finally going all out with a full skeleton tourbillon series, for which this T4 is the most recent iteration. The 316L steel case adopts the now-famous tonneau shape at 41mm across by 48mm tall, which despite its apparent size, wears surprisingly well given that it wraps around the wrist and is a sensible 12.5mm thick. That’s always been a party trick of some of the earlier Richard Mille’s at least, wearing much smaller than the bold design suggests.

But it’s not identical to the Richard Mille; Zeroo Time also saw fit to add some design inputs unique to the T4, to try and separate it from its distant but much wealthier cousin. There are slots machined top and bottom to take some of the visual weight out of the chin and forehead of the watch, if you like, as well as sapphire case sides to let more light into the movement. This watch in fact has sapphire on four sides, offering a fantastically unobstructed view of the hairy wrist beneath it.

So, as far as the outside of the watch goes, what are you missing for that extra $498,500? For a start, the Richard Mille RM 012 is made from platinum, which would have blown Zeroo Time’s budget many times over, so I think it was a fair decision to stick to steel. If steel is a bit too boring for you, however, the case does also come in rose gold and yellow gold, but the effect is applied with a PVD coating rather than the expensive precious metal itself.

The T4’s Movement

Whilst the tonneau case is the T4’s most identifiable feature, really it’s what’s inside that’s bringing the fight to Richard Mille. The RM 012’s calibre is less a watch movement and more an architectural sculpture, suspending the oily bits with a very three-dimensional structure of lightweight tantalum tubes that earnt the watch the top prize at the 2006 GPHG. It’s less a watch calibre and more a roll cage.

This look may be pretty unremarkable today, but in 2006 there was nothing else like it. To see the movement floating in that industrial nest of tubes enlightened a new generation of enthusiasts to the joys of mechanical watchmaking, regardless of whether or not the design added any practical improvement to the watch’s functionality. It just looked cool, and sometimes, that’s enough. Whether it’s half a million enough is another story.

And so, the T4 does its absolute best to recreate the RM 012’s visual drama for a fraction of the price. Of course, that mean the three-dimensionality of the RM 012 gets toned down into the flat, layered structure of a typical movement, and, as visible from the back, the watch makes do with a round movement rather than one customised for the case shape—bit it’s all in aid of bringing you as much as possible for as little as possible.

From the front, this round peg in a tonneau-shaped hole scenario is cleverly masked by a PVD-coated plate that blends the perimeter of the movement into the case, for which a choice of colours, black, blue and green, is available to pair with a matching rubber strap. But really what we’re rewarded with most are the innards of the movement itself.

There’s a twin mainspring top and bottom, which jointly bestow the hand-wound watch with a decent seventy hours of power reserve—identical to the RM 012’s as it happens—and, also just like the RM 012, there’s a proper, functional tourbillon. This isn’t some open-heart balance wheel jobby masquerading as a tourbillon—the cage really does rotate the escapement as intended by Abraham-Louis Breguet when he invented it all those centuries ago.

The T4’s Price

So how does Zeroo Time achieve all this for a paltry 0.3% of the Richard Mille’s price? First, I really think the 80-20 rules applies here. Zeroo Time has chosen to do as much as is necessary to offer a watch with 80% of the RM 012’s appeal, leaving that oh-so-difficult—and expensive—final 20% to the Swiss. After all, had they chosen to pursue it to entirely match the Richard Mille, we wouldn’t be here talking about how it costs less than a TAG Heuer Formula 1.

The other factor, and one I’d be surprised if you hadn’t already cottoned on to, is that, despite the brand’s Japanese origins, this watch is manufactured in China. I mean, there’s nowhere else in the world currently that you can get a cheaper tourbillon from, so it’s there or nowhere. But despite this, Zeroo Time has taken some mitigating steps to protect against this potential pitfall, with assembly and quality control happening in Japan. Personally, I consider the quality of a watch to be more down to the skill of the person and the resource they have available rather than where they’re from, but you can see why Zeroo Time is keen to point this out.

There’s a two year warranty which is reassuring to a degree, but nevertheless the experience is hardly going to be the same as buying a big-name watch from a well-known retailer when it comes to piece-of-mind—but once again we circle back to price, and how this watch wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the compromises that make it so. Buying one is of course a risk, but there’s very little else you can do to own and enjoy a Richard Mille-esque tourbillon any other way.

We’ve come a long way from identifying the differences in fake watches coming out of China, and it pleases me no end that this technical capability is being used more and more to the benefit of enthusiasts to own and enjoy watches and complications that are otherwise prohibitively expensive. Whilst we’re hardly going to see Richard Mille driven into the ground by the Zeroo Time T4, it does feel like a revolution of sorts, even if it is a quiet one. With more choice than ever before, buying a watch has never been so enjoyable.

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