Do Rolex Watches Tick? Yes–Here’s Our Guide to Rolex Beat Rates

You may have heard the conventional wisdom that “Rolexes don’t tick,” but they do–in fact all modern Rolexes tick at a rate of 8 beats per second (often stated as 28,800 vph, for “vibrations per hour”). That’s a pretty standard beat rate for mechanical watches nowadays. Typical quartz watches, though, tick only once per second, so compared to that, the “sweeping” motion of a mechanical watch is quite smooth. Even Rolex made some quartz watches, though. So, do Rolex tick? Yes, and here’s our guide to how fast they do.

Do Rolex Watches Tick? Beat Rate Chart

Modern Rolex (Caliber 3000 movement or newer)	8 beats per second
Vintage Rolex (Caliber 1500 movement or older)	Between 5-6 beats per second (5.5 is most common)
Oysterquartz (1977-2003)	1 beat per second
Quartz Cellini (1989-2012)	0.1 beats per second (no seconds hand)
Rolex 5100 “Texan” (Mid-1970’s, first quartz Rolex, 1,000 made)	512 beats per second

Every automatic Rolex produced since 1988 ticks 8 times per second. Before that, 5.5 beats per second (19,800 vph) was the most common Rolex beat rate. Some 4-digit Daytonas and some old two-hand manual-wind dress watches tick 6 times per second (21,600 vph), while most Rolexes made before about 1965 will be at 5 beats per second (18,000 vph).

Do Non-Rolex Watches Tick the Same Way?

Yes, almost all mechanical watches have frequencies in Rolex’s same range (5-8 beats per second) although some “high-beat” watches (like ones from Grand Seiko and Zenith) beat 10 times per second.

The only watch that truly doesn’t tick at all is a Seiko Spring Drive. Spring Drives move completely smoothly, and that’s thanks to some pretty intense technology involving circuit boards and electromagnetism.

Understanding VPH vs. BPH vs. Hz

“Vibrations per hour” (vph) and “beats per hour” (bph) are the same thing. That’s the number of times a watch beats every hour, so you can divide that by 3,600 to calculate ticks per second.

Hz, meanwhile, is the number of complete oscillations per second. This is not the same thing as ticks per second. A complete oscillation effectively includes a back and forth motion–two ticks. Picture a complete sine wave (one oscillation) and think of each time it crosses the x-axis as a tick. So, if a movement’s frequency is stated in Hz, multiply it by two to get the beats-per-second figure.

What Did Jay-Z Mean By “Rollies That Don’t Tick Tock?”

Now that we’ve established that every Rolex does in fact tick, you may be wondering what Jay-Z meant when he famously rapped about having “Rollies that don’t tick tock.” There are three possible interpretations:

• His Rolexes are real, and thus sweep smoothly and don’t obviously “tick” once per second like many cheap fakes.
• He owns so many Rolexes that several of them haven’t been worn in a while. Rolexes have power reserves of about 2-3 days, so some of them are now stopped.
• He wears quartz Cellini models. They have no seconds hands, so the minute hand just advances slightly once every ten seconds. This is the least plausible explanation.

If you have any more questions about how fast Rolex watches tick, or any other important Jay-Z lyric interpretations, please let us know in the comments.

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A Collector’s Guide to the Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 16710
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