Chinese Tourbillons is a new small business that specializes in, well… tourbillons. I’ve written an article for background information on tourbillons, in which I brush on the origins and the relevance of the tourbillon cage today.
Nowadays, there are plenty of Chinese-built tourbillons for sale on eBay, but sadly most of them are made to be counterfeits of existing designs. To add pain to injury, a lot of eBay sellers descibre open heart watches as tourbillons, which make search results exponentially high.
That being said, the one think I like about CTourbillon’s CTM101 model is that they tried to come up with an original design, a stainless steel case of 42 mm in diameter.
Also, their courbillon cage is big and symmetrical, which makes it very pleasing to the eye.
I have to express my doubts concerning the readability of dark blue hands above a black dial though…
Anyway, the watch is very reasonably priced: you can grab one for GBP 399.
It is certainly the cheapest tourbillon that I’ve seen. It is too bad they included a fake moon-phase indicator; kind of ruins the whole thing.