Nomos Glashutte has once again produced a clean elegant watch inspired by simplicity and modernism, a school of thought that can be traced back to the Bauhaus School of Arts in Germany. The final design of this watch was produced as a result of the collaboration between renown watch designers Werner Aisslinger and Tina Bunyaprasit and NOMOS Glashütte.
Slim SS Case
The Nomos Autobahn neomatik 41 date sports gray has a 41 mm wide and 10.5mm thick stainless steel case that’s water resistant up to 100m with a slightly domed AR-coated sapphire crystal. They’ve always found a way to incorporate few minimalistic features into their watches, with the Autobahn Sports gray having thin lugs and extremely thin bezel resulting into a large dial screen.
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Attached to the case is a blue-black woven textile strap that’s comfortable and pliant on the wrist supported by the stainless steel pin buckle.
Dial and Hands
This watch comes with a dial design that’s distinctive from typical watch dials that have either a flat or a slightly convex shape, the Autobahn’s dial is concave-shaped. The dial immediately draws one’s attention due to the use of smooth curves and shapes in the dial design.
The galvanized dial has a blue luminous ring with superluminova emitting a blue lume in low light conditions. Inspiration of the dial comes the dashboard of a car with the blue ring running from 8 o’clock to 4 o’clock resembling a speedometer and the elongated date aperture positioned above the 6 o’clock resembling an odometer. The date window displays the present date at the center with the previous and following day’s date on the side. A recessed subdial indicating seconds adds more depth and detail to the dial.
The vivid rhodium-plated hour hand has a shade of orange which clearly distinguishes it from the dial, making the time easier to read. However, due to the slenderness and length of the minute hand, the white minute hand with orange tip is easily mistaken for a seconds hand and the hour hand for a minute hand.
It could take some time to adjust to this but when you finally get accustomed to this, it’s very easy to read. In low-light conditions, the shadow of the un-lumed hands is read against the lumed track on the dial.
In-House Caliber: Duw 6101
Recently, Nomos have moved from using imported movements to using fully in-house built movement in their watches, like the automatic world-timer caliber in the Nomos Zürich Weltzeit and the DUW 3001 movement in the Nomos Minimatik.
Similarly, The Autobahn Neomatik 41 uses the in-house built caliber DUW6101. Being the first Neomatik caliber with a date complication, much attention was paid to the design and construction process of the movement. The result is a very thin 35.2mm diameter movement with just 3.6mm height which fits perfectly into the watch. It’s a self-winding movement that has 27 jewels with a power reserve of up to 42 hours. The date can be easily corrected just by turning the Nomos-signed crown in any direction with only a few turns needed before it’s set. This nice movement can be viewed through the caseback.
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As stated earlier, the date can be set quickly with a few turns of the crown in either direction, knowing this protects you from damaging the movement by twisting it in a wrong direction. This movement is secured in six positions and the balance bridge is fixed by screws on both sides. The movement comprises of a tempered blue balance spring, a bi-directional winding rotor, a Glashutte three-quarter plate finished with rhodium plated surfaces with Glashütte ribbing and Nomos golden perlage engraving. Another special feature of the movement is the stop-seconds mechanism which allows for better synchronization with a correct clock.
Final Thoughts
The Autobahn Neomatik 41 in general, is a clean, bold and elegant watch. Readability is not sacrificed despite its bold features and this is complemented by the soft play of color contrast. Visual aesthetics is also ascertained by the concave dial, the blue luminous ring, and the elongated date window. The functionality of the watch is not compromised despite its visual prominence; the movement was crafted to a high level of detail such that it reads time with great precision.
As for comfortability, the watch sits nicely on the wrist, thanks to the thin down-turned lugs and the tailor-made woven textile strap. At a retail price of $4,800 the Autobahn 41 date offers a good value for money.
To have a look at more specs you can visit the official product page here.
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