Some call it the “Batman” in honor of its black-and-blue bezel. For more than half a century, Cheap Rolex Replica fans associated Rolex GMT-Master II Replica with two bezel-color combinations.In this feature from the WatchTime archives, we test the first version of the Rolex GMT-Master II ever to sport this color combo.

The Rolex GMT bezels are well known and they have nicknames: Greenwich time “Pepsi” and “Coca-Cola” because they remembered the commercial packaging of these brands. So when a new, unprecedented, beaten version of the Rolex GMT-Master II appeared in the cheap Rolex window last year in Basel, buzz abounded. Interest in the watch was so keen that every few minutes the booth’s cleaning team had to wipe from the window the fingerprints left by fairgoers’ pointing at it. It wasn’t long before the watch had earned a nickname of its own. Or, rather, a pair of nicknames: “Bruiser” and “Batman.” The bezel was notable not just because it was black and blue, but because it was black and blue and made of ceramic. No one had ever succeeded in combining two colors of ceramic in a single-piece insert. As long as the GMT bezels were made of metal, as they wer e for decades, it was no trick to make them two colors. But in 2005, when Rolex Replica Watches began to shift to ceramic bezels with the launch of a special 50th-anniversary model of the GMT-Master II, those new bezels were of necessity just one color. The advantages of ceramic over metal are that it is more scratch-resistant and less likely to fade after years of exposure to light. In 2006 and 2007, Rolex brought out, respectively, steel- and-gold and all-steel versions of the Cheap Rolex Replica GMT-Master II, both with all-black ceramic bezels.

What makes two-color is the Rolex invention and patented new manufacturing method. It involves applying a metal halide to the front half of the billet assembly to create kiln colors. In a Cheap Rolex GMT watch, a bi-color bezel serves a practical purpose: it makes it easy to distinguish the second time zone’s a.m. hours from its p.m. ones. Rolex’s new color combination is more than practical, it’s attractive. Furthermore, it makes sense: blue is a more logical choice to indicate the daytime hours than is red.The downside is that the difference between black and blue can be nearly impossible to detect in poor light, but the upside is that blue is much less flashy than red, so this watch can be worn with a business suit. To match the bezel, the 24-hour hand is now blue, rather than green as on the black-bezel model. The lettering on the dial is all white; on the black-bezel version, the words “GMT-Master II” are green. All in all, this new version makes a very harmonious impression.