In the Rolex field, many factories have now released free-sprung balance movement, including QF, ERF, Rich, and others. Among these names, some are new to me, and honestly, I am not even sure whether they are newly established factories or just branches of some older factories.

For example, I previously talked about RG. It sounds like a new name, but it is actually operated by RC. RC’s business has really expanded quickly. Last year, their Day-Date became extremely popular across the whole market, and now they have successively released the Daytona and the GMT-Master models.

Alright, let’s come back to this Daytona from QF Factory.

QF Factory’s current marketing strategy is somewhat similar to what Noob Factory used to do. For almost every hot-selling model, they like to keep releasing new versions and create new selling points or gimmicks, but in reality, the actual upgrades are often not that significant.

For example, this 4131 Daytona is claimed to be the V5 version. This kind of naming easily gives people the impression that their Daytona is the best one on the market. However, in terms of overall workmanship, there is still a gap between QF and VS, not to mention compared with the previous Clean version.

Now QF has free-sprung versions of the 4131, 4132, and 3235 movements. In fact, for Rolex Datejust and Daytona models, it does not really matter that much whether you choose a free-sprung movement or not.

However, for some exhibition caseback models, such as the Le Mans Daytona and the newly released Daytona in 2026, you can choose the version with the free-sprung movement. And in the current market, it seems that QF is the only factory making a Daytona with the free-sprung 4132 movement.