Does Rolex make a smartwatch? What the luxury houses tried instead
Founder & CEO, Smartlet - CentraleSupelec engineer - Concours Lepine 2025, Awarded - CES 2026
Contents
No. Rolex has never sold a smartwatch, and every watch in its current catalogue is mechanical. The nearest it ever came to electronics was the Oysterquartz, a quartz line made from 1977 to 2001. People keep typing "Rolex smartwatch" anyway, as if a Submariner with a heart-rate sensor might be hiding somewhere on a dealer's back shelf. Several luxury houses did build a version of that watch between 2015 and 2018. How those watches aged explains why Rolex stayed out, and what owners who want both end up putting on their wrist.
- Rolex: no smartwatch, ever. Its only electronic watch was the quartz Oysterquartz, made from 1977 to 2001.
- Who did build one. Four houses tried between 2015 and 2018, TAG Heuer first and Hublot last, all on Google's watch platform.
- Apple tried from the other side. The 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition sold for $10,000 to $17,000 in 2015 and was discontinued in the fall of 2016.
- Two calendars. Rolex told its dealers in 2015 to expect around ten years between services. Electronics age on a phone's schedule.
- What owners wear. A Rolex on top of the wrist and a smartwatch underneath, on one Smartlet bracelet, or one watch on each arm.
The short answer, and its one exception
Walk the current Rolex collection from the Oyster Perpetual to the Sky-Dweller and you will not find a battery, let alone a screen. Not one. Every model runs on a mechanical movement.
The exception is old. In 1977, with the quartz crisis at full strength, Rolex released the Oysterquartz, a quartz movement in an angular Oyster case. Production stopped in 2001 and the last pieces sold by 2003, according to Bob's Watches. Twenty-four years of quartz, then silence. Rolex has never gone near a connected watch since.
So the search hides a different wish. Hardly anyone wants a Rolex that counts steps. They want to keep the Rolex they already own and still get the notifications and the sleep data that a smartwatch gives them. Keep that distinction in mind, because the houses that did build a luxury smartwatch answered the first wish and missed the second.
The houses that did build one
Between 2015 and 2018, four names from the luxury world put their logo on a smartwatch. All of them ran Google's watch software. First it was called Android Wear, then Wear OS, a rename that tells you how quickly that world moves compared with the one these houses usually live in.
| House | Watch | Year | Launch price | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TAG Heuer | Connected | 2015 | $1,500 | Android Wear, built with Intel and Google |
| Montblanc | Summit | 2017 | from $890 | Android Wear 2.0 |
| Louis Vuitton | Tambour Horizon | 2017 | from $2,450 | Android |
| Hublot | Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia | 2018 | $5,200 | Wear OS, 2,018 pieces |
Sources: eWeek for TAG Heuer, Mobile World Live for Montblanc, BusinessTech for Louis Vuitton and Android Central for Hublot.
My favourite detail sits in the TAG Heuer launch. Once the two-year warranty on the Connected ran out, owners could hand it back and take a mechanical TAG Heuer with a Swiss movement in exchange, for another $1,500. The maker had priced in, on day one, the moment its own smartwatch would feel old. Honest, in its way.
Hublot went for spectacle. Every referee at the 2018 World Cup in Russia was given the Big Bang Referee to wear, and the public version was capped at 2,018 pieces. A lovely object. The tournament lasted a month.
Each of these was a smartwatch in a luxury case. Underneath the logo sat a circuit board, and a circuit board ages on its own schedule, whatever the name on the dial.
Apple tried the same thing from the other side
In 2015 Apple sold an Apple Watch Edition in 18-karat gold, priced from $10,000 to $17,000. In the fall of 2016, when the Series 2 arrived, the gold models were discontinued, as Basic Apple Guy recounts. About eighteen months on sale. Short.
Gold had done nothing for the processor, which was the part of the watch that set its expiry date, and which no amount of 18-karat case could keep current once the next generation shipped. The luxury houses dressed a computer as a watch and Apple dressed one in gold. Both times, the computer won the argument. The longer story of how the wrist got its first screens is in our history of the smartwatch, and Sony's own exit from the category is told in the Wena article.
Two calendars that never line up
In 2015 Rolex stretched its warranty from two years to five and told its dealers that the typical gap between services had grown to approximately ten years, as reported by Wound for Life. A Rolex bought this autumn is expected to see a watchmaker about once a decade, then carry on for decades more. Ten years is a geological age in electronics.
A smartwatch keeps a different diary, governed by battery chemistry and by how long its maker keeps shipping software. We compared the two lifespans in watch servicing versus wearable replacement, and the daily version of the same gap in power reserve versus battery.
A mechanical watch promises that nothing will ever need to change. A smartwatch promises that next year's model will do more. No single case can honour both promises.
Seen from there, Rolex staying out looks less like stubbornness than arithmetic. Simple arithmetic. Whatever its private reasons, a smart Rolex would have had to break one of those two promises, and the brand has spent a century selling the first one. The question a Rolex owner is really asking is different: how to wear two objects that keep two calendars, without either one getting in the way.
What Rolex owners wear instead
Owners have found two answers. The old one is double wristing: the Rolex on one arm, the smartwatch on the other. It works and has a respectable history. It also means two arms knocking into desks all day, and a shirt cuff that never quite closes over either watch on the days a jacket matters.
The newer one fits on a single wrist: the Smartlet, a metal link bracelet that holds both watches. For the day, it replaces the Rolex's own bracelet: two watch adapters seat in the Rolex's lug holes in place of the spring bars, and the Smartlet bracelet sides lock into them. The Rolex sits on top of the wrist. The smartwatch sits underneath, in the central part of the bracelet, against the skin, and the bracelet is sized to the wrist by its links so it stays there.
Lug widths for every Rolex family are on the Rolex compatibility page. The two most common pairings have their own guides: a Rolex with an Apple Watch and a Rolex with a Whoop. There are dedicated pages for the Submariner with a Whoop and the Datejust with a Fitbit Air too.
The first installation of the watch adapters takes under 10 minutes with the spring bar tool included in the box. For a Rolex, having that first installation done by a watchmaker is a sensible precaution. After that, with a pair of watch adapters on each watch, switching watches takes under 5 seconds by hand.
The Oyster bracelet stays in its pouch and goes back on any day the Rolex is worn alone. And if one evening calls for the Rolex only, the Clasp accessory closes the Smartlet in place of the smartwatch. A watchmaker's view of the whole setup is in this interview, and the steps are on set up your Smartlet.
Omega owners type the same search with a different brand name, and so do Cartier owners. Neither house sells a smartwatch either, and the Omega and Cartier compatibility pages list which of their watches take watch adapters.
Rolex will most likely keep its catalogue mechanical. Smartlet, awarded at the Concours Lepine 2025 and selected for CES 2026, is built for the wrist that wants both: see the Smartlet One collection.
