This is the only dial here that lets the bezel stones be exactly what they are. Reference 278341RBR is the 31mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold with a domed bezel set with diamonds, and this configuration carries a slate dial with applied hour markers and no stones, on the Jubilee bracelet. A colorless stone picks up a cast from whatever sits near it, so on the chocolate and rose grounds the bezel reads warm, and on the pale grounds it reads bright and slightly hard. Slate takes no position. It is neither warm nor pale, so it exerts nothing on the stones above it, and the bezel ends up looking the way a diamond bezel looks with nothing arguing with it.
A colorless stone reports whatever is around it, which is normally the mount and on this watch is also the dial. Everose gives the bezel stones a faint warm undertone at close range, since the gold they are cut into surrounds each one, and on most grounds the dial reinforces that from the other side. Slate does not. It is a cool mid-tone applied as a sunray finish, brushed outward from the center so it runs bright on one side and dark on the other, and at no point does it push the stones in either direction. What that produces is the most neutral reading of a gem-set bezel the reference offers. The Jubilee then does the opposite of the dial. Its five-piece links run roughly twice the component count of the Oyster across the same width, with polished Everose rows down the middle and brushed steel to either side, so the wrist is unambiguously warm and returns light almost continuously. The bezel sits between a neutral dial and a warm bracelet and takes its character from neither. The markers applied to the slate ground are solid Everose with height and edges, alternating between standing clear and settling back as the sunray surface moves beneath them. Everose is alloyed with platinum so its tone holds rather than drifting toward yellow over decades, and every gold element on the watch is solid rather than plated or capped. The bezel is also the widest point of the case, which makes its stones the first part of the watch to meet a doorframe or a desk edge.
One complication sits behind all of that, and the model was built around it. The date advances in an instant at midnight instead of drifting through the surrounding hours, which is what the Datejust brought to the market in 1945 and what its name refers to. Rolex matches the disc behind the window to the slate ground, which on a sunray dial is harder than on a flat one, since the surface it has to agree with has no fixed brightness and the disc does. The frame is proportioned for a 31mm dial instead of scaled down from a larger one, keeping it clear of the markers to either side, and the Cyclops lens above it has been part of the model since 1953 and enlarges the numeral roughly two and a half times. Setting the date runs through the winding crown at its own position and leaves the hands untouched. The movement is self-winding with a power reserve of approximately 55 hours, designed around this case width rather than adapted down to it, since a narrower barrel holds less energy and a lighter rotor collects less from the same motion. That reserve carries the watch across a weekend off the wrist. The crown screws down and the Jubilee closes on a concealed clasp folded into the links.
The Jubilee was made for the Datejust and introduced with it in 1945, and the two have stayed associated in a way the bracelet never managed anywhere else in the range. The watch was the first self-winding wristwatch to display the date in a window and has been produced without interruption since. The 31mm case falls between the 28mm Lady-Datejust and the 36mm original, and the 278000 generation replaced the 178000 series in 2018 with a revised case and bracelet. Rolex registered the name for its steel and gold construction in 1933. Everose was introduced in 2005 and the colors built around it since have mostly been warm, which is what makes a grey dial on this alloy a minority specification rather than a default. Within the generation, 278341RBR is the steel and Everose reference with a diamond-set domed bezel, and 278241 carries the identical dial and bracelet under a plain dome. Between those two the slate dial hardly changes at all, and that is the point of it. Every other ground on the reference reads differently depending on whether the case is set, and this one looks much the same either way. Slate is also offered set, with the enlarged six.
The buyer for this is usually someone who wanted a diamond bezel and did not want the watch to become about the diamond bezel. Slate is the ground that allows both, since it neither competes with the stones nor flatters them, and the result is a watch where the bezel is clearly the most expensive thing on it and clearly not the point of it. The Jubilee shifts that slightly by adding warmth below the case, and anyone who wants the bezel read as neutrally as possible should look at the Oyster version instead. The sunray dial is what keeps the face from going inert under so much brightness at the rim. Buyers arrive here from the warmer grounds having decided the watch was reading as jewelry, and from the plain-bezel slate having decided it was reading as too little. The configuration sits between those two positions on purpose, and it is chosen by people who have already tried both. Neither group tends to describe the dial when explaining the choice, which is exactly what a neutral ground is for.
