Rado Watches – Dependable Design
If you’re familiar with the major brands of designer watches, you will undoubtedly be familiar with Rado watches. Founded in 1950 in Switzerland, the company quickly developed a reputation for quality and technical innovation and rightly continues the tradition of Swiss-made luxury watches.
The company is now one of the world’s most popular manufacturer of luxury watches, producing some 500,000 timepieces annually. Their current lineup of Rado watches includes more than 100 different models in both men’s and women’s designs and one of the widest price ranges in the industry.
Read on for the full Rado watches review.
Build Quality
Movements
Innovation
Styling and Features
Care and Maintenance
Warranty
Prices
Where to Buy
Summary
Rado Watches Build Quality
The build quality of Rado watches is legendary. The company has long been an innovator in structural design, and they have pioneered the use of unusual materials in their case and bezel construction. While most companies are content to use stainless steel for their cases, the company has experimented with a tungsten-titanium carbide alloy and a group of hard, high-tech materials known in the industry as ceramics. Rado watches also feature extensive use of sapphire crystal in their bezels. Many of the models are water resistant to at least 100 meters. These are solid, rugged, well-built watches.
As “old-school” watchmakers, the company uses a mixture of old and newer technology in their watches. You’ll find both modern, Swiss-made quartz movements as well as manually wound and self-winding Swiss mechanical movements. The company favors traditional analog displays.
The innovation in this brand comes from their construction. They utilize modern, rock-hard alloys and high-tech ceramics in their cases, along with stainless steel in some models. A few models use seamless, one-piece case construction, and their bezels often feature sapphire crystal, which is quite hard and relatively scratch-resistant.
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The styling offers a fascinating mixture of old and new styling. They certainly favor traditional designs, which is to be expected from a company that has been making timepieces for more than half a century.
You’ll find traditional time-and-date displays and gold and silver colored cases and bands with traditional round faces. They do, however, offer some rather exquisite designs in their higher-end models, including the use of jewels and precious metals.
A few of their models do offer some color, as well and some of their wristwatches look more like bracelets than timepieces. Their product line is pretty diverse, and while they don’t really make many watches that might be regarded as casual, they do make quite a few that would be suitable for business wear and quite a lot that would certainly catch attention at formal gatherings.
Rado watches tend to favor men’s models, though they do offer quite a large selection of models for women, too. They offer models that would work well as fashion accessories, models that are utilitarian, and sports models with chronograph features, as well.
You’ll find, as with any luxury watch, that these watches are fine pieces of precision jewelry and while they don’t require unusual care, you’ll want to treat them as you would any other piece of fine jewelry. That means keeping them away from extremes of temperature, magnetic fields and caustic chemicals.
Leather bands, while found on relatively few models, will benefit from occasional treatment with leather conditioners. Automatic models will either need to be worn regularly or stored in a watch winder to keep them running smoothly. Quartz models will need to have their batteries replaced every few years. If you have a sports model and spend a lot of time near water, you should probably have a jeweler inspect it every few years to ensure that the case remains watertight.
As warranties go, the warranty you get with Rado watches is typical. Your purchase will come with a two year warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. Given the company’s legendary attention to detail and build quality, this is more than sufficient, as any manufacturing defects are certain to appear well within the warranty period. Still, as warranties go, this one is relatively short. You may have the option of purchasing an extended warranty from your retailer; if you are concerned about this issue, please inquire at the time of purchase.
As these are genuinely luxury timepieces, you will likely not be surprised to see that this brand is relatively expensive when compared with other designer watch brands. You won’t find anything in the sub-$100 range, and finding one for less than $500 might require buying second hand.
New models start at $500 or so, and their top of the line models sell for roughly $30,000. Many models are available in the $1000-$3000 range. Due to the company’s reputation for quality and for building attractive wristwatches, many of their models, especially those offered as limited editions, have a tendency to increase in value as they go out of production.
You may find that your purchase appreciates in value over time, as these watches are quite popular with collectors, particularly older models.
Not surprisingly, you’ll often find the brand for sale at fine jewelry shops, though you can also find them for sale at upscale department stores. You can also occasionally find them for sale online, though the company prefers to sell their product line via selected retailers. If you’re looking for a particular model, you might have to shop around, as many of their products are limited and their product line is rather large, making it unlikely that any single retailer is going to have their entire range of products in stock at any given time.
Rado Watches Summary
Rado has been building quality timepieces for the better part of a century now, and they have rightly developed a reputation for building a quality, attractive, and reliable timepiece that looks good and is likely to last for years. They are not inexpensive, and many of their models are explicitly pricey, but you get what you pay for. When buying Rado watches, you know you’re getting a beautiful, attractive timepiece that will attract attention everywhere you go.