Independents

ei8htohms
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Urwerk 202 criticisms/comments

Hello All,

I tend not to comment on watches that I find completely silly or uninteresting, but sometimes watches that are very interesting or attractive in some regard leave with me nagging concerns that I want to voice, perhaps in the vain attempt to give watchmakers that I like and respect some constructive feedback.  I know, who the hell am I to tell these guys anything?  I continue undaunted however, what are these forums for otherwise?

I love some of the Urwerk designs.  The 103 in particular I found quite lovely and fascinating and the new 202 is VERY cool as well (click to check it out if you haven't already):

click here

I have to take some exception to the variable efficiency automatic mechanism in this watch however.  Let me just assume that it does what they claim it does and the restriction of airflow from the turbines can effectively damp the winding efficiency wihtout unduly damping it in the complete "free" setting.  These assumptions are not at all trivial by the way, but without some extensive testing, the extent ot which this mechanism represents a real world performance gain instead of a parasitic gee-gaw remains to be seen.

The real issue I have with this mechanism however is the fact that it is not coupled with a power reserve indicator.  Because of this, there is no way to consciously set the winding efficiency in use or certainly test whether or not it does what it's intended to do.  Sure, you can set it to "stop" (blocked) when playing racquetball to ease the wear and tear on the rotor bearing, but other than that, you're completely in the dark about whether your watch is fully wound all the time even when set to "sport" or just barely limping along when set to "free".

Because of this, the variable efficiency automatic winding mechanism is reduced to being merely a toy and a pseudo-technical selling point, just like the variable inertia rotor in the RM005 and 010.  Granted, this one is a lot more fun since it has a little lever to play with, but it's not really useful, at least not nearly as much as it might be otherwise. 

I'd like to challenge our friends at Urwerk to step up and show us what this thing can do: put a power reserve indicator on the next one.

_john

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