Rado Reveals an Icy Edge and a Trendier Look

Rado R-One

2012 is turning out to be a great coming of age year for Rado.  A year where its style has finally caught up with its top notch ceramic technology. Rado has always been renowned for its avant garde insistence on scratch resistance.  In the past, however, I have always felt Rado's watch style was stuck in a stylistic pit of a bygone era.  An era of tight leather pants, pink rock and big hair. The infinity for clinging to the past did dawn on designers at Rado, leading to the more trendier HyperChrome watches; however  trendier often means more competition. But Rado has vast technological experience in ceramics, something which trendy 

Rado HyperChrome

Rado has cutting edge technology associated with the hardness of the watch material.   The new HyperChrome watches are an awe inspiring 1,250 vickers with some models built from  Ceramos™
- a Rado high tech ceramic and stainless steel specialty. 
With the new RADO R-ONE (displayed above), Rado's style has rocketed over decades and landed in the not to distant future.   Personally, I love the watch for its icy blue markings and matching dial hands.  The ceramic gleams of  indestructibility.  Of course the sci fi futuristic look is not every ones cup of tea and thus its editions are limited to 300 pieces.
The Rado R-One is made from ceramic and titanium. The  48.55 mm high and 34.5mm wide case is curved for comfort. Rado places emphasizes on its high tech materials by keeping the dial small in relation to the watch face space.  Crafted from black ceramic, the dial is accentuated by bold electric-blue hands. The same shade of blue runs along the sides of the watch indenting on either side of the dial.  A blue line runs straight down the center of the watch pausing for the dial and continuing its journey.  All blue accentuations are coated in lume making for an interesting looking article in the dark.   The watch is powered by a highly efficient Swiss ETA 2094 automatic chronograph. A see through case back allows the wearer vision of the custom Rado automatic rotor  and underlying movement.
The watch dial is protected by a scratch resistant sapphire crystal with a really cool depression in the center.

Cost: $15,000 - quite pricey for a Rado, but it is a limited edition with an exclusive target customer base. Besides Rado has top scores when it comes to longevity. 

Rado History
 Rado was founded in Switzerland in 1917, as strictly a watch movements manufacturer known as Schlup ; Co. In 1957 Rado launched its first collection of wrist watches. In 1983 Rado became part of the Swatch Group. Rado manufacturers its watches utilizing non conventional material such as hard metal(tungsten and titanium carbide), ceramics, lanthanum and sapphire crystal (which is now used in most high end luxury watches). In 1962 Rado made its mark on the Watch World by producing the world's first scratch proof watch; the Rado Diastar. Rado kept experimenting with different hardy materials and in 1996 Rado unveiled its Vision 1 watch. The watch casing was made from crushed diamonds, so hard was the watch that it made its way into the Guinness Book of Records for the hardest watch ever.