Rolex 3235 Movement: With vs Without Regulator vs JH Weighted

Hello everyone, I’m Ray. Today I took some comparison photos of the Rolex 3235 movement versions.

This article mainly has photos of the VS Factory 3235 movement with regulator, the VS Factory’s newly upgraded 3235 movement without regulator, and the JH free-sprung 3235 movement with balance weights used by other factories.

How to identify if a 3235 movement is with regulator or without regulator?

I made a comparison picture. Actually it’s very easy to tell. Look at the hairspring area: the movement with regulator has it on both sides, and the movement without regulator has it on one side.

The genuine uses the movement without regulator. Because the Rolex watch caseback is closed, if you don’t open the caseback, you can’t see at all if it is a movement without regulator. So the replica watch factories didn’t develop in this direction in the past few years, because most people don’t need it at all, and the development cost is very high.

What is a free-sprung + balance weight movement?

We know that Rolex super clone movements mainly come from two places, China Dandong movement and China Shanghai movement, called for short: DD movement (Dandong) and SH movement (Shanghai). Right now, Dandong has not developed a free-sprung movement with balance weights, but the Shanghai movement already has free-sprung with balance weights. In the industry it is called for short: JH free-sprung with balance weights.

The factories I know that use JH free-sprung with balance weights right now are: RICH Factory, JF Factory, QF Factory.

VS Factory has always used the DD movement. To be honest, I personally have always liked the DD movement, because they are very durable, and the movement stability is also very high. Right now I also hope they develop the balance weights soon.

As for what the free-sprung with balance weights actually does, to be honest, I also don’t know. It’s just that the look is closer to the genuine movement. But like I said, it’s not very useful, and the price is more than 100 USD higher.