Post by timelessluxwatches on Feb 6, 2016 14:31:45 GMT -6
Omega De Ville Annual Calendar Review
The Omega De Ville is the brand's dressiest line of watches, usually somewhat reserved in design. This particular De Ville, with its blued seconds hand and beautifully polished applied Roman numerals, isn't the most reserved watch the company has ever made but it is one of the most striking. Aside from its beauty there is the extremely advanced 8601 co-axial automatic movement inside which is not only accurate, but possesses the fairly rare annual calendar complication.
The Omega De Ville is a watch that I've long felt hasn't gotten the attention it's due. That's partly because the De Ville line lacks the massive fan base of the Speedmaster and Seamaster lines, but it's also because the De Ville Hour Vision stole its thunder. Yet, I think this De Ville, be it with just a date or an annual calendar like this one is, is one of the prettiest models Omega makes.
In my opinion, this De Ville strikes something of an ideal balance between a reserved, austere look and something that's more visually daring. Watches like the Nomos Orion Weiss or Girard Perregaux 1966 in steel, for instance, are all the way over on the austere side, and while pretty, are not particularly striking. Conversely, you could look at the Omega Planet Ocean GoodPlanet GMT, which is absolutely striking but perhaps not the most discreet watch available. This De Ville is certainly more on the subtle side, but I think it finds a nice compromise.
Of course, half the reason you're even looking at this watch is because of the movement, specifically because it has the unusual annual calendar complication. The 8500-based 8601 here actually "knows" (to anthropomorphize the movement) which months have 30 days or 31 days, meaning that, with the exception of February (because it has variable days depending on the year), the owner doesn't have to correct the date at the end of short months. You may assume, as most do, that aside from this complication, the rest of this 8601 is pretty much the same as the other 8500s you've seen, but you'd be wrong. There are actually several important changes found elsewhere, but we'll get to that in the movement section.
The dial is simply marvelous, and it really exists as an example of how much you can do with very little. It is, without a doubt, one of the best looking dials I've ever reviewed.
The dial, although it appears white, is actually silver, made in the sort of prototypical German style that you might find in Nomos, Glashutte Original or ALS. That gives the silver a sort of matte white look and allows it to have adequate contrast against the silver hands and markers.
The great design really begins with the hands. These are very simple multifaceted stick hands, each of which have a slight taper. The opposing angles of each side give it a sort of folded appearance, and this allows it to capture very different lighting on each edge, increasing legibility. The seconds hand is heat blued and looks brilliant against the dial. While these elements are great, it's what Omega does with them elsewhere that really makes the watch come together.
What I love here is that the same design of the hands has been carried over into elegant Roman numerals. They're extremely angular and finely polished, but what's more important is that it's cohesive. A real designer, or team of designers, sat down and really thought this watch through. I don't even normally like Roman numerals and I am blown away by these.
Here we find the biggest visual difference between the annual calendar and ordinary model. Most people expect to see a day complication in this position, but instead you'll find the month complication. This was (more or less) necessary really for purposes of setting the watch although it does have the functionality of just being able to see the month (in case you forget?). The date/month rings match the dial very well and there's a nice beveled edge that smoothly transitions to the complications. I really appreciate the marginally shortened III marker as opposed to just removing it altogether. You really don't notice that it's abbreviated at a glance.
Of course, the dial also declares itself to be an annual calendar should you forget. The text is roughly equal from top to bottom and is quite balanced, although in general I think less is more when it comes to writing on the dial.
This has more to do with the movement than the dial, but since we're looking at the dial anyway, it's a good opportunity to discuss one of the major differences between the 8601 and the 8500. The 8500 is well known for its independent hour hand but the 8601 returns to the more conventional way of setting the time. However, you do gain quickset date and month in that exchange. This was necessary because to turn the independent hour around the dial twice per date advance it would have taken hours to each the appropriate month.
There's another advantage too, namely that the date changes instantly at midnight. In most 8500s, this is a very slow process which takes over an hour. In the 8601, however, this occurs all at once with no awkward transition between two different numbers. For my personal preferences, this is a huge perk.
With its rather subtle dial, you'd expect the case to follow suit, but you'd be wrong. The case is actually much more adventurous than the rest of the watch.
Before we get to the more interesting aspects we'll discuss its basic attributes, namely its 41mm diameter. I think that's a great, versatile size for the watch although I wouldn't mind seeing a smaller size offered alongside it, perhaps a 38mm.
The side of the case has a very cool and well-executed vertical brush to it, sandwiched between the polished top and bottom of the watch. As is proper of a dress watch, the crown doesn't screw down, making hand winding and setting the watch much more convenient. The watch is still rated for 100 meters though, so while you won't be diving in it, it's no less secure than any other given sports watch.
I love the lugs on this model. They appear to be separate components welded to the rest of the case but I think the line between them is just very deeply engraved for stylistic purposes as there doesn't appear to be a seam on the side of the case where they meet. Regardless, they look fantastic.
Here you can see the line from where that lug drops off. It's still there, but there's no gap, making me think the gap is added on stylistically. If I had to offer a complaint about the watch, which I still love, it's that it's quite thick at about 14mm. As we all know by now, the 8500 is a thick movement to begin with, and the addition of an annual calendar surely didn't help. Perhaps Omega would consider doing something like the Tresor and making a hand wound version to help in this aspect.
The 8500, and its progeny, has become one of the most respected movements in the world. No movement produced at this sort of scale has achieved its unique performance attributes of consistently superior accuracy, extended power reserve and long term reliability. Today we look at a fairly heavily modified variant, the 8601. We'll be going into everything that makes the 8500 in general special, but we'll also be discussing the changes that Omega made to create this annual calendar version.
Before we get into how the movement works, let's just take a moment to appreciate its beautiful Arabesque finishing. It's one of the prettier movements available in this price range and almost certainly prettier than its most direct competitors.
Here we see the dual mainspring design of the 8500 and 8601. Dual mainsprings have a variety of advantages. For one thing, they can be relatively easy fit into a watch of a particular diameter as opposed to one giant mainspring, which sometimes necessitates building a movement on top of or around the component, the IWC Portofino 8 Days being a great example of what that looks like. Another advantage, at least with sequential mainsprings like on this Omega, is that it can level out the power delivery, reducing instability caused by varying levels of energy in the mainsprings. This is an area where the stats for the 8601 differ slightly, receiving the still-excellent 55 hour power reserve as opposed to the 8500's 60. That's nonetheless very good, however, about 15 more than the industry average.
Now it's time to talk about the escapement, really the series of components that makes a watch actually a watch. This is even more important for Omega since they're the only company allowed to produce co-axial escapements.
Due to the layout of the watch, and most watches really, we can't see most of the escapement, but we are able to look straight down into the very unusual escape wheel. Its strange shape is the result of the co-axial approach, which is designed to decrease friction between the escape wheel (shown) and the pallet fork. This is the hardest working area of a watch and it requires service relatively frequently. The co-axial escapement is designed to increase the time between needed service intervals and therefore increase stability (over the long term) within those intervals. It's actually a very exotic design and quite interesting to see in the kinds of movements ordinary people can afford.
The free sprung balance, as opposed to the smooth balance with regulator, has become the standard in high-end Swiss watches. While the Germans and Japanese have stayed more or less focused on regulated designs, Patek, Journe, Audemars Piguet, Rolex, Omega and now even Tudor have almost exclusively moved to the free sprung balance. Regulated movements, which have their own prestigious followers like Grand Seiko and most of A. Lange & Sohne, as well as most more accessible Swiss watches (namely those powered by ETA), use an additional mechanism to control the rate of the movement called the regulator. This device changes the effective length of the hairspring to speed up or slow down the movement. This makes a watch substantially easier to adjust, so simple that many watch collectors can even do it at home, but it does come with potential penalties. For one thing, the regulator can have a disruptive influence on the hairspring, hurting stability, but for another they can "deregulate" over time, causing the watch to deviate progressively more over the course of years.
Omega, like Rolex and Patek, however, uses a free sprung balance. This actually means, counterintuitively, that the watch has one fewer component than their more entry level counterparts, namely the regulator. Without a regulator, watchmakers still need to change the rate of the movement, and that's usually by means of a variable inertia balance. In a regulated movement, the balance wheel is almost always smooth and it lacks any practical means of adjusting the balance wheel itself. In a free sprung design, however, the balance wheel can be directly altered to change the rate. This is almost always done by means of tiny screws in the rim of the balance wheel, highlighted here. These little screws are usually made from gold, to make them heavier, and by advancing or retreating an opposing pair of screws you can speed up or slow down the movement. This is obviously quite a bit trickier than simply moving a single screw on a balance bridge in a regulated watch, so these require more effort to get precise, but with sufficient skill and time, they tend to be more stable, both in the short and long term, than regulated movements. Note that, like Rolex, Omega places its screws on the inside of the balance wheel instead of the outside. This allows them to use a larger balance wheel without making the movement larger. Compare that approach to the more complicated, but no more effective, ones from Breguet and Tudor.
Another special component to the 8500 and to this 8601 is the silicon hairspring. Omega didn't invent the silicon hairspring but they're the first company to produce them in any meaningful scale. The advantages to the silicon hairspring are primarily that it's totally immune to magnetism and that it's much lighter than metallic alloys, meaning it's somewhat less susceptible to losses of accuracy due to vibration. I apologize for the quality of the photo as we're reaching the very limit of what my equipment is capable of, but I really wanted to show the dark hairspring.
Another unique aspect to the Omega 8500 and 8601 is this Nivachoc shock absorber, protecting the balance shaft. I have no idea what performance advantages, if any, this offers over competing solutions, but it is unique nonetheless.
The beautiful matching rotor is mounted on ceramic ball bearings, which are more durable than metallic ones. The 8601 is part of a shrinking minority of watchmakers that are sticking with bidirectional automatic winding, meaning this movement automatically winds in both the clockwise and counterclockwise directions. While unidirectional winding works fine, and is used by many respected brands, I prefer bidirectional because it's usually quieter and you can almost never feel the rotor moving on your wrist.
One thing I haven't shown you is the annual calendar complication, and there's a good reason for that: you can't see it without taking the watch apart. But I can tell you a little about how it works. Basically, the watch knows which months are short and long. On a 30 day month, at midnight of the 30th, it will skip the 31st and go to the 1st, making the watch a little more convenient to use. What's the difference between an annual calendar and the more common (and expensive) perpetual calendar? Well, the perpetual calendar knows when the leap year is and can adjust February accordingly. On this 8601 movement, February is treated as a 30 day month, but depending on the year it has either 28 or 29 days. Thus, on an annual calendar such as this, you will have to change the date once per year at the end of February.
The De Ville, in general, is one of my favorite lines of Omega watches. Perhaps that's not surprising for a fan of Grand Seiko and Nomos watches, but it is surprising that the line gets so little attention from watch collectors. As many fans of understated watches are out there, models like this and the Hour Vision should be huge hits. Of course, it's not that they're unliked, more that they're overshadowed by the legendary Seamaster and Speedmaster lines, and that's a shame. Omega collectors are really missing out.
When I first saw this De Ville, albeit the regular date model, I wished that the hands were a little more provocative. As time's gone on now, I've come to really enjoy how the hands that each individual line of the Roman numerals match perfectly. The polishing on the numerals is especially impressive. They're some of the finest applied markers I've ever seen.
Classic looks aside, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the watch is its annual calendar. You might be asking yourself: why do we need an annual calendar? Especially on a watch like this (unlike the regular 8500) which has a quickset date. The answer, is of course, because it's very cool. It's cool in an horological sense, in the way that rare and esoteric complications are in general cool, but you'll probably find yourself up at midnight at the end of a 30 day month waiting to see the date and month change over. You'd better not blink, because unlike most Omega movements, this happens instantaneously, a major improvement over the ordinary 8500.
This is all thanks to the 8601, part of one of the most advanced families of mechanical movements in the world. It's basically an upgraded 8500, which is quite a compliment. It looks the same, and for the most part performs the same, but you get an added month complication as part of the annual calendar as well as a quickset month and date, which are appreciated.
The De Ville Annual Calendar, both this version with the Roman numerals and the Hour Vision, are truly some of my favorite Omega watches. I'd have them before the vast majority of Speedmasters or Seamasters. I suppose that makes me an outlier among Omega fans, but something about these two watches, particularly with the silver/white dials and blued seconds hands, really sings to me. I also prefer the 8601 to the 8500 (although you can get this movement in Seamasters as well). It's not really so much for the annual calendar, although that's very neat, it's really for the instant date change. I've been wearing 8500s for years now and really the slow date change is the only thing I've ever found not to like about it, so that's a big perk for me. Uncharacteristically, however, I would actually recommend you get this watch on the bracelet over the strap, despite its dressy look. The De Ville bracelet is just extremely nice and comfortable, and it really looks cohesive with this particular case.