【INDUSTRY IN-DEPTH REVIEW】Hublot’s Big Bang Turns 20. The Real Story Is the Movement.

Let’s start with the prejudice. Mention Hublot in polite watch-collecting company and the reaction is often instantaneous: too loud, too obvious, too eager to be seen. Mention Audemars Piguet and the room softens into reverence.

And yet reverence, as any seasoned collector knows, is not the same thing as reliability. I once owned an AP Royal Oak Offshore 26400AU in forged carbon, a watch so visually persuasive it felt almost immune to criticism. The movement, however, was less convincing. Inside sat the calibre 3126/3840, a modular construction pairing AP’s in-house 3120 base with a Dubois-Dépraz chronograph module. On paper, respectable. In practice, rather less romantic: chronograph stutter, reset misalignment, a return from service, then another failure. Mine was hardly an isolated case. Collectors have long traded similar stories, and modular chronographs, for all their convenience, have a habit of revealing their compromises at precisely the wrong moment.

Which is what makes Hublot’s trajectory so interesting. While the industry was busy rolling its eyes at the brand’s extroversion, Hublot was quietly doing the sort of thing critics usually claim to admire most: serious movement development.

In 2010, only five years after the Big Bang had effectively rewritten Hublot’s fortunes, the maison introduced the Unico, its first in-house chronograph and a genuinely significant one at that. Launched as the brand’s first manufacture movement, the original Unico established Hublot’s flyback chronograph credentials; in 2018, the second-generation HUB1280 refined that proposition into a slimmer, more efficient architecture while retaining the 72-hour power reserve and integrated flyback construction. Far from a vanity exercise, it marked Hublot’s transition from stylistic provocation to mechanical legitimacy.

That, in retrospect, was the moment the script began to change.

Reloaded, and Finally Taken Seriously

Which brings us to Watches & Wonders 2026, where Hublot presented the Big Bang Reloaded: not a theatrical reinvention, but something more persuasive in the long run—a disciplined refinement of a watch that was already saying quite a lot.

The collection is powered by the HUB1280, the second-generation Unico calibre introduced in 2018. It is an integrated self-winding flyback chronograph beating at 4Hz, with a 72-hour power reserve, a silicon escapement, and five patented innovations that include a backlash-compensating oscillating clutch and an anti-shaking system for the chronograph seconds hand.

But the more revealing shift is aesthetic. The 44mm case has been sharpened, the dial composition made more deliberate, and the movement’s theatre given cleaner staging. The column wheel at 6 o’clock and dual oscillating clutch at 8 o’clock are no longer merely visible; they are framed as protagonists. The date has been moved to between 4 and 5 o’clock, liberating the chronograph register from its old visual interruption, while the overall layout feels more legible, more technical and, crucially, more self-assured. It is Hublot at its best: brash, yes, but no longer in need of apology.

Offered in titanium ceramic, blue ceramic, dark green ceramic, Magic Gold and the inevitable All Black, the Reloaded range makes no attempt at understatement. That, frankly, is part of the point. The difference now is that the swagger is underwritten by credible watchmaking.

The Audemars Piguet Question

It is impossible to discuss Hublot’s technical maturation without glancing, however carefully, at Audemars Piguet. Not because the two brands occupy the same emotional register—they do not—but because their chronograph stories reveal an uncomfortable asymmetry.

Audemars Piguet introduced the calibre 4401 in 2019, and I say that with some affection because I bought the 26238ST and have kept it ever since. It is an integrated self-winding flyback chronograph with column wheel, vertical clutch and a 70-hour power reserve—by all accounts an excellent modern movement. But timing matters in watchmaking, and the chronology is striking: Hublot had put its first in-house Unico chronograph into the market in 2010 and had already evolved it into the HUB1280 by the time AP’s integrated answer arrived.

That does not diminish AP’s achievement, nor does it suddenly make Hublot the sentimental choice. It does, however, complicate the lazy hierarchy that still governs so much collector discourse. Hublot was not merely catching up; in chronograph development, it was early, ambitious and, rather awkwardly for its detractors, correct.

The Verdict

This is where taste, as ever, becomes decisive.

If what moves you is heritage, finishing and the reassuring gravity of established icons, Audemars Piguet remains the instinctive choice. The Royal Oak Offshore still carries one of modern watchmaking’s most potent signatures, and the calibre 4401 gives it the contemporary mechanical substance it long deserved.

But if your loyalties lie with engineering-led design, visible mechanics and the pleasure of seeing a brand outgrow its own caricature, Hublot becomes difficult to dismiss.

The Unico’s appeal is not that it exists, but that it was conceived with unusual clarity. Dial-side visibility was not decorative afterthought but part of the movement’s identity. The flyback function was designed for real-world robustness. The silicon escapement and modular serviceability were practical decisions, not brochure ornaments. In other words, Hublot built a modern chronograph for modern use—and then had the confidence to show you exactly how it worked.

By the time many collectors were prepared to grant Hublot even reluctant credit, the brand had already spent well over a decade refining the Unico into one of the more distinctive chronograph propositions in contemporary luxury watchmaking.

Twenty years after the Big Bang first crashed onto the scene, the old provocation has matured into something more interesting: a house style backed by genuine mechanical substance. The Reloaded collection does not ask to be liked by everyone. It simply makes a much stronger case for being respected.

And in watchmaking, respect tends to last longer than hype.

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