Ressence TYPE 10 DN is its first oil-filled watch with an in-house movement

Ressence has unveiled the TYPE 10 DN, nicknamed Dark Night, the first oil-filled watch the Belgian independent has powered with its own movement. Limited to 100 pieces, the watch is priced at CHF 45,000 before taxes, which is roughly $54,700, and debuts publicly at WatchTime New York before retail from November 2026.

At the heart of it is the RW-04, the second proprietary calibre after the RW-01 that arrived earlier this year inside the Type 11 at Watches and Wonders in Geneva. The RW-04 was designed in-house at Ressence and produced with the movement specialist Concepto, and it changes what powered every oil-filled model before it.

Ressence has long built its distinctive orbital display around a base ETA movement, including in the oil-filled Type 3, Type 5 and Type 7. The TYPE 10 replaces that with Ressence's own engine, a step founder Benoît Mintiens has been working toward since sketches began four years ago.

The RW-04 is self-winding and can also be wound by hand, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a frequency reserve of 60 hours. Its twin barrels are the reason the reserve climbs that high, even with the oil in the upper chamber and the extra load of the display module.

The movement side carries 252 components. The oil-filled display above it, the ROCS 10 module, adds another 196, and the complete watch holds 538 parts in all, including 49 gears, 47 jewels and eight ball bearings.

How the oil and the movement are kept apart

Like every oil-filled Ressence, the TYPE 10 splits itself into two hermetically sealed chambers. The movement runs in air below, while the ROCS module turns through oil above, and the two never touch directly.

Instead, a disc fitted with micro-magnets on the air side drives a mirrored disc floating in the oil. A titanium membrane just 0.1 millimetres thick separates the two sets of magnets, which sit 0.2 millimetres apart and transmit power with no shaft passing between the environments.

Oil swells and shrinks with temperature, so an expansion membrane aboard absorbs those shifts in volume and keeps gas bubbles from forming as the liquid cools. A colour-coded indicator on the dial shows green when the oil is in its normal range of around 25 degrees Celsius, give or take 10.

The display turns on a convex titanium minute disc at the centre, driving three eccentric biaxial satellites inclined at 9.75 and 17 degrees. These carry the hours, the second time zone, a runner that rotates over 120 seconds and doubles as a shock absorber, and the oil temperature readout.

A new case language for Ressence

The TYPE 10 also introduces a sharper design, shaped by the same principles of hydrodynamics and integration the brand has always pursued. Ressence's own description is that the case flows into the strap, the sapphire follows the case, and the dial rises toward the crystal.

The case measures 41.5 millimetres in diameter and is made from polished Grade 5 titanium under a deep blue DLC coating. The same Dark Knight tone runs through the case, the dial and the integrated rubber strap, pulling the whole object into one continuous blue form.

A domed sapphire crystal covers the front, and a second double-domed one sits at the back, where the RW-04 is visible through a donut-shaped opening. There is no crown: the watch is wound and set by turning the middle section of the multi-part caseback, once its outer perimeter is unscrewed.

The bezel inlay is not a single ring but 24 separate titanium segments, twelve sandblasted and filled with luminous paint, and twelve larger elements with a radially brushed surface. Mintiens built it that way so each segment catches the light at a slightly different angle.

The GMT subdial has also been reworked for this watch, losing the 24-hour numerals of the Type 7 in favour of a graphical readout. It marks midnight clearly and shows day and night for the second time zone, and the rest of the dial carries no numerals at all.

For all that machinery, the watch weighs 82 grams, which Ressence frames as its argument that more mechanical sophistication should make a watch feel simpler, not heavier. Water resistance stands at 50 metres through the Ressence Compression Lock System.

Ressence is the independent Antwerp maker that removed the hands entirely, telling time with discs that orbit across the dial. In our coverage of watches jewelry we have followed the brand through that shift, and this move away from the ETA base closes the longest-running criticism of paying five figures for one.

Ressence has positioned it as the first oil-filled reference of a new generation, following the Type 3, Type 5 and Type 7 into a self-developed mechanical era.