Slate is not quite a color and not quite a neutral, which is the whole reason Rolex keeps it in the catalogue. A grey dial with warmth in it reads as charcoal in one light and as something closer to brown in another, and next to Everose gold it leans toward the warm end without ever committing to it. Reference 126201 is the 36mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold with a domed Everose bezel, and this configuration pairs it with a slate dial and applied index markers, on the Jubilee bracelet. It is the most ambiguous of the unset dials offered here and the one that changes most between a photograph and a wrist.
Rolex has combined steel and gold since the 1930s and registered a name for the practice in 1933, working from the position that steel supplies the structure and gold supplies the color. The steel here forms the case and the outer bracelet links while the Everose takes the domed bezel, the winding crown, the bracelet center rows and the applied markers on the dial. The gold is solid rather than plated or capped, which is why these bracelets hold their appearance across decades where most of the industry's two-tone watches do not, and it is also why the weight sits closer to a solid gold bracelet than the proportion of gold would suggest. Rolex matches the polish on the center rows to the polish on the bezel so the two read as a single metal rather than as separate applications of it. Everose is the brand's own rose gold alloy, cast in its foundry and introduced in 2005, carrying a small proportion of platinum that stops the color drifting toward yellow. The domed bezel is smooth and unbroken, the quieter of the two shapes Rolex offers on the model where a fluted bezel would be the signature, and on a dial as unsettled as slate that matters, since a faceted bezel would throw warm reflections inward and settle a question the design leaves open. The dial itself carries a sunray finish that shifts as the wrist turns, and the applied indexes are Everose and faceted, with the date at three under the Cyclops lens on a matched disc. The hands are polished Everose and drawn for this case rather than scaled down or up from another size, since Rolex redraws them per case rather than reusing a single set across the range. Sunray finishing is applied as fine radial brushing from the center outward, which is what makes the dial brighten and darken as the wrist rotates rather than holding one tone the way a flat lacquer would.
At 36mm the Datejust shows the date and nothing else, and that restraint is the model's entire argument. The aperture sits at three beneath the Cyclops lens, in use since 1953 and still the most recognizable thing about the watch after the case profile itself. The date changes instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the surrounding hour, the feature the Datejust introduced in 1945 and the one it takes its name from. Correction runs through the winding crown without moving the hands, hand winding uses the same crown with no separate position to learn, and nothing the watch asks for requires a tool. The movement is self-winding with a power reserve of approximately 70 hours, which means the watch can be set down on a Friday evening and picked up on Monday morning still running and still correct, and that is a materially different proposition from a shorter reserve for anyone who rotates more than one watch. The crown screws down against the case, and the Jubilee closes with a concealed clasp folded away inside the links so the bracelet presents an unbroken outline. Correction takes seconds and requires no tool. Slate is one of four grounds this reference offers unset and one of two built in two marker treatments.
The Datejust arrived in 1945 as the first self-winding wristwatch to show the date in a window, and 36mm is the size it was born at. The model has been made in every combination of metals Rolex works with, but the steel and gold versions have always been the volume of it rather than a variant, which is worth stating because the solid gold references attract most of the attention. The 126200 generation replaced the 116200 series in 2018 and brought the longer running time along with a revised case and bracelet. Slate has been in the dial range across several generations without ever being the volume seller, which is part of why it still reads as a considered choice rather than a default. Within the generation, 126201 is the steel and Everose gold reference with a domed bezel, offered across a wide dial range and on two bracelets. The 36mm case has also become the most requested size in the Datejust range over the past decade, after a long period in which the 41mm held most of the attention. Slate is also offered set, which gives the ground six of the twenty-two rows, level with white and more than any other ground.
The buyer for this wants a watch that does not announce a color. Slate reads as grey at a glance and as something warmer on inspection, which suits people who want the Everose without a dial that matches it and without a dial that fights it either. At 36mm it also sits in the size that has become the most requested in the Datejust range over the past decade, after a long period in which the 41mm took most of the attention, and it wears comfortably on a wider variety of wrists than either of the other sizes. On the Jubilee the steel and gold alternate in narrow rows, which keeps the watch reading as genuinely two-tone rather than as a steel watch with gold trim. Buyers comparing it to the white and chocolate dials here are usually deciding how much they want the dial to declare itself. Five of the nine grounds here are set.
