Post by timelessluxwatches on Jan 9, 2016 11:57:08 GMT -6
Nomos Tangente Neomatik Review
The Tangente Neomatik is a very important watch for Nomos. For one thing, it's one of the two watches announced at Baselworld 2015 to carry Nomos' all new DUW 3001 movement. It's also the first automatic Tangente, a standout in a crowd of hand wound watches. Finally, while it's part of the Tangente collection, it's also part of a new wave of playful limited edition models called Neomatik.
The Tangente Neomatik is a watch with a somewhat confusing history, alongside its Neomatik brother, the Minimatik. When this Tangente was announced at Baselworld, it was called the Tangente Automatik, obviously because it is the first automatic model in that collection. Somewhere between then and now small stylistic changes were made and they both received the Neomatik name. Now Neomatik is a collection of two versions, a silver dial like you see here and a champagne dial counterpart, each of which you will find in a variety of other collections like Orion. What ties them together, aside from a more adventurous color palette, is their new DUW 3001 movement.
The new movement, like all current Nomos movements, is not only in-house but quite beautiful. While it has a variety of interesting touches, by far the most provocative are its dimensions. At just 3.2mm thick, it's one of the thinnest automatic movements available today, and certainly at this price point.
While the new movement may be getting the majority of the attention, it's certainly not the only interesting aspect of the Tangente Neomatik. Tangentes, like most Nomos watches, are typically very reserved and a bit serious. The Neomatik, however, has red writing and a red seconds hand. It also has blue minute numerals near the perimeter of the dial. If you're not a follower of Nomos, you might be inclined to wonder what the big deal is, but for the Tangente this is actually very sporty.
The actual dial itself remains true to Nomos, and to German watchmaking generally, being silver (although white in appearance).
The basic Tangente elements are all here, they've just been breathed on a bit. The stick hands, the bold Arabic even numerals, the gratuitous empty space on the dial, are all carried over from other Tangente models.
The hour and minute hands may look the same as on other Tangentes, but there is a slight difference. In most Tangentes, and certainly the core models, the hands are heat blued. Here, however, they're much darker. They're not precisely black, as in certain lights they actually appear more like gunmetal. I suppose that blue hands would have just been one too many colored elements in this watch.
The red seconds hand is certainly one of the bolder changes, but don't miss the other update here. They've added numerals for the subdial in this version, helping to make it sportier.
Another change, although subtler, is the addition of cyan blue numerals at the edge of the dial.
One thing the Tangente Neomatik lacks is a date. In fact, all Neomatiks lack a date because the DUW 3001 doesn't have the requisite complication. I'd guess that a version with a date will come later, but the movement's diameter seems to be a good fit for these 35mm cases and there's no strange empty spot underneath the subdial.
While the Neomatik is the most recent foray into more colorful watches, it certainly isn't the first. Nomos has produced colorful watches for quite a while, but this kind of color scheme seems to derive from their recent hit, the Metro. That model also combined bright red accents with a softer second color, in that case a mint or sea foam green. Since that model has been a runaway success, I have little doubt this one will also do well, especially since it's a little less adventurous and therefore likely to appeal to a broad audience.
The DUW 3001 is the star of the show. While Nomos has been exclusively making in-house movements for years, most of its designs were derived, at least in part, from older movement designs. That began to change recently with the new swing system escapement.
The swing system is really the name for Nomos' ability to produce the most difficult, and most important, components in a movement, the escapement. This is an ability lacked even by many "in-house" watch companies. Initially, the swing system was merely a drop in replacement for their older, outsourced escapements, but the ability to produce their own escapement also gave them a great deal more freedom in designing their next movement, which is this, the DUW 3001. This movement is virtually all Nomos, both in manufacture and design, from the ground up. Consequently, aside from their exotic high-end movements in the Lambda and Lux, it is their most radical design and quite a departure from the Alpha and Epsilon.
There are many new approaches to design in the DUW 3001, but the most important comes down to dimensions. This movement is an astonishing 3.2mm thin. The ubiquitous Rolex 3135, for comparison purposes, is about 6mm thick. It's not the thinnest automatic in the world, but it's not far from it, and certainly in a class of its own at this price point. Probably the most popular ultra-thin automatic in the watch world today is the revered Jaeger LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Moon and its Cal. 925. In that watch, which is far more expensive, the movement is 4.9mm thick, although in fairness to JLC, it has two more complications than the Nomos. Previously, collectors who wanted a thin, affordable automatic really only had one place to turn to, the ETA 2892, but the DUW 3001 is not only thinner, but prettier.
While the dimensions of the movement are fascinating, they have somewhat overshadowed other aspects of the movement, some of which are substantial departures from previous Nomos designs. In this photo we're looking at the components that are actually responsible for keeping time. All other components basically live to serve these, the pallet fork, escape wheel, balance wheel and hairspring.
The most obvious change is the switch from a balance cock to a balance bridge. All other Nomos movements, and almost all other movements in general (notable exceptions include Omega, Rolex and, more recently, Tudor), use balance cocks. This simply means that the balance wheel is suspended by only one side. In this design, a bridge, the balance wheel is supported on both sides. This design is usually associated with rugged movements as it provides two points of attachment, but Nomos tells me that they actually went this way for a different reason. Apparently, the balance cock was simply too long (although long on only one side) to fit in their ultra-thin design and that's how they ended up here. I tend to prefer balance bridges myself.
Like almost all Nomos movements (excepting the high-end DUW 1001 and DUW 2002, which use a more elaborate swan neck regulator), a Triovis fine adjustment system is used. The mechanics of this regulator are not fundamentally dissimilar to other systems, but it is far more compact. In an ETA movement or Grand Seiko, for example, you'd have an eccentric screw that moves a lever (regulator index) that is ultimately attached to the regulator, the component that changes the effective length of the hairspring. You'll see these components on the balance cock of their respective watches. The watch you're wearing right now almost certainly uses this system, which has had extremely broad adoption in Japanese and Swiss watches. The Triovis system, however, puts the fine adjustment mechanism right next to the regulator. This may have been desirable given how narrow the bridge is, although other forms of regulators are not unheard of with balance bridges, like Glashutte Original's Panomatic Lunar, or the old Grand Seiko 4420 (the former utilizing a swan neck, the latter, the tadpole). Other fans of Triovis include Girard-Perregaux and JLC (when they’re not free sprung, at any rate).
The hairspring was also made by Nomos, quite an accomplishment for the company. Nomos' in-house springs are blued, which, while common in the luxury watches of antiquity, is now quite rare. Really only one company, aside from Nomos, is producing blued hairsprings in-house in large numbers, namely Rolex.
It appears that Nomos has made some changes to the way in which the watch is manually wound as well. Thankfully they’ve removed some of the top plate so you can actually see this in action. Nomos has always been good about revealing a little more of this area of their watches. If you were to look at the back of an Omega 8500 or Grand Seiko 9S85, for instance, the functionally equivalent components are well hidden.
The rotor is attached differently from the older Epsilon line of automatics as well. Like those, however, Nomos continued the use of ball bearings to mount the oscillating weight. Under close inspection, I believe these are metallic, as opposed to ceramic, which is pretty standard these days (a few use ceramic like Omega, Damasko and Jaeger LeCoultre). I've highlighted the components in red because they're incredibly small.
The DUW 3001 also features a new rotor. The Epsilon family of movements, and its DUW successors, use a similar rotor, but this new one is more skeletonized. Basically they removed the brace in the middle. I definitely prefer this new design if only because it hides less of the movement.
The DUW 3001, like other Nomos movements, operates at a rather leisurely 21,600 BPH compared to the standard 28,800. A lot of collectors prefer relatively low frequency watches as they have a reputation for longevity, and the sound of the watch is much less frantic. Speaking of sound, this is one of the louder movements out there, both in terms of the escapement and the rotor. The ticking is not so loud as to be heard from your wrist over any ordinary ambient noise level, although you may be able to hear it in the quiet of the night if it rests near you. The rotor, although a bidirectional mechanism, is also audible after quick movements, although not so loud as a Jaeger 899 or Valjoux 7750 for instance, just loud enough for you to know it's there on occasion. I'm told that Nomos actually has a different approach with automatic winding here somehow, but until I see a diagram of the movement, I'm not educated enough to comment on it.
The DUW 3001 is an astonishingly thin automatic movement, but it's also much more for the company. It was designed and built, ground up, by Nomos and really shows that an already impressive company can do even more than we initially expected. It also tells us a lot about the future of their movements, because here the designers had pretty much free rein to do whatever they wanted. We see that Nomos is a committed devotee of the regulator, for instance, as opposed to a free sprung design, and that their love of bidirectional winding lives on. Nomos seems to have always preferred thin watches, with nary a thick model in their entire lineup, but the DUW 3001 really sets a new bar.
While the dial may be a little adventurous, and the movement innovative, the case is classic Nomos Tangente. It's a very simple case, which sticks to either perfectly round or straight shapes. It's clearly designed not to distract from the dial and to be very utilitarian, but like everything else Nomos makes, it becomes strikingly austere.
It is different in one way, however. Despite being an automatic, it's just 0.3mm thicker than its manual counterpart (when both have sapphire backs). It really ought to be compared to the Tangomat line, which is entirely automatic. The Tangomat 38, itself no thick watch, is actually 1.4mm thicker than the Tangente Automatik, really showing how much space they saved here.
The case diameter remains unchanged from the ordinary Tangente. While 35mm is on the smaller side for a man's watch, do keep in mind the lugs. Unsurprisingly, the crown doesn't screw down.
A lug to lug dimension of 44mm means that it's actually a fairly long watch. The general rule with Nomos is to take whatever size you normally wear and buy one "level" smaller than that. That is to say if you ordinarily wear a 40mm, I'd recommend looking at 38s. If you normally wear a 38, check out the 35 and so on.
Part of the reason to do this is not merely the lug design, but also the all-dial (no bezel) look, which gives it more wrist presence than most watches its size.
The Tangente Neomatik, as part of the DUW 3001's vanguard, had to be a little more eye catching than usual, and I suspect that's one reason why they went with the more fun loving color schemes they use throughout the Neomatik range.
It certainly accomplished that, mostly in virtue of its red seconds and tiny blue minute numerals, but also in virtue of its amazing thinness.
That particular stat is, of course, the product of the DUW 3001. This new movement is not only thin, it's gorgeous. I love the switch to the balance bridge, which I think looks terrific and may be slightly more robust. It's amazing how flat the top plate of the movement is. It really looks like a hand wound movement with a rotor attached to it, compared to the three dimensional surface of an Epsilon, for instance. It’s amazing how much movement you can get for your money right now.
Is it my favorite Tangente? Well, yes and no. In terms of the movement, definitely. I really like hand wound watches, but the DUW 3001 is simply too impressive to ignore. Stylistically, I suppose I'm more of a Nomos traditionalist, having following the brand for years. I prefer the dressier design of the "regular" Tangente, with blued hands and all black numerals, but this design doesn't deviate too much from that. It still looks terrific, and I think best of all, fans of newer models like the Metro may be especially attracted to the Neomatik offerings across the board (including the new Metro Neomatik itself).
So that's the Tangente Neomatik, our first DUW 3001 model, but there are many others to look at. I recommend you check out my Neomatik Buyer's Guide and see the wide variety collectors have when choosing a DUW 3001 watch this year.
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