Watches come in all shapes: round, tonneau, and rectangular. Square? Well, that is rather uncommon. And even more so, if it is one that is features a rather interesting or beautiful design. The NOMOS Tetra is an example of a beautifully designed square watch, and in this year’s Baselworld, the Glashütte-based watchmaker had just made one of its flagship watches even better.
One of the biggest qualms of collectors, especially the younger ones, would be inconvenience of manually winding their watches. The Tetra, and most of NOMOS watches, is unfortunately not fitted with a self-winding movement previously. A few years back, NOMOS had decided to introduce automatic movements into their collection. The response, especially the neomatik series, was excellent. As a result, NOMOS had decided to incorporate the neomatik movement into the Tetra collection.
The Case, Hand, and Dial
The NOMOS Tetra neomatik. Simple, and yet classical.
The watch, naturally, features the iconic square case that had adorned the Tetra collection since its inception. However, its case size had increased from 28mm to 33mm this time, to accommodate the automatic movement. With its larger case size, we think that the watch is sized much more appropriately for the gentlemen in today’s age.
In terms of aesthetics, the Tetra neomatik still features the same Bauhaus-inspired design cues. We actually like the way NOMOS had played with shapes: square for the case and minute track, and circle for both the small seconds dial and the hour indices. Despite its simple aesthetics, the use of different shapes had gave the Tetra a much more interesting appearance.
The new Nomos Tetra neomatik, with two different dial variants.
Additionally, the watch comes with two different dial colour variants – one with cyan blue accents on a white silver-plated dial, the other with matching green details on a deep blue dial. On top of that, the designer had also incorporated different colours into the dial of the timepiece, such as red and turquoise. Also, the neomatik logo on both models’ dials is gold, rather than the neon-colored ones as seen in the first series of watches. Not only does this give the watch some contrast, but it had definitely injected a bit of vibrancy into the timepiece.
The Movement: DUW3001
The DUW3001, as seen from its transparent caseback.
The watch, interestingly, is power by NOMOS’ in-house produced neomatik movement – the DUW3001. Notably, this is not an all-new movement. The DUW3001 was first featured in the inaugural series of the neomatik watches. It proved to be a massive hit with the owners, thanks to its convenient and fuss-free operation.
The self-winding movement does not have any other complications, but it has a decent power reserve of around 42 hours. Also, the movement features several forms of finishing and characteristics: Glashütte three-quarter plate, rhodium-plated movement surfaces, Glashütte ribbing, as well as the NOMOS perlage. And at this price point, it is certainly many miles ahead of its counterparts.
Concluding Thoughts
The NOMOS Tetra neomatik, on the wrist. It certainly does look bigger than what we initially thought.
Although slightly unusual in terms of its overall aesthetics, but we think that the square cased NOMOS Tetra neomatik is a rather gorgeous and timeless timepiece. At 33mm, it is sized rather nicely and surprisingly sits pretty nicely on the wrists, despite the fact that many people these days would consider a 33mm watches to be small. Perhaps it is the square case that makes the watch seems bigger than its dimension suggests.
Finally, the watch is priced at between SGD4920 and SGD5060, and it is paired with a Shell Cordovan strap with NOMOS’ winged clasp. We reckon it offers tremendous value for such a decent in-house produced timepiece. Moreover, with its simple and thin case, we feel that it is a perfect dress watch for someone who wishes to own something different from their corporate counterparts.
Technical Specifications:
NOMOS Tetra neomatik/ Tetra neomatik tiefblau
- Case: stainless steel, bipartite; sapphire crystal glass and sapphire crystal glass back; size 33 mm by 33 mm; height 7.2 mm
- Dial: galvanized, white silver-plated, cyan blue print/ lacquered, deep blue, green print
- Hands: oxidized black, seconds hand red lacquered/ rhodium-plated, seconds hand neon orange lacquered
- Water-resistant: to 3 atm
- Strap: Horween Genuine Shell Cordovan black, remborde, lug width 20 mm
- Reference number: 421/ 422
- DUW 3001: in-house built NOMOS caliber with automatic winding; NOMOS swing system with tempered blue balance spring. (DUW stands for: NOMOS Glashütte Deutsche Uhrenwerke.)
- Diameter: 12 3⁄4 lines (28.8 mm)
- Movement height: 3.2 mm
- Power reserve: approx. 42 hours
- Characteristics: decentralized seconds, stop-seconds mechanism, Glashütte three-quarter plate, NOMOS balance bridge, 27 jewels, bidirectional winding rotor, Incabloc shock protection, adjusted in six positions, tempered blue screws, rhodium-plated movement surfaces with Glashütte ribbing and NOMOS perlage
