This is typical behavior of watch enthusiasts: we see photos of a new timepiece online, or try it on at a boutique or when meeting a friend, or in my case, borrow a sample from the brand for a hands-on review. However much we may like the watch, a thought always creeps up on us from a hidden compartment of our brain that says : “I only wish it came with X.” Whatever “X” is—a deeper shade of eggshell white on the dial; a crown 1mm larger in diameter; a date aperture at the six and not three. “X” can be anything objective and subjective your resourceful mind comes up with. And this thought always does a cameo because we, watch nerds, are insatiable. We will always find something to critique, whether we are collectors—which prevents us from purchasing the watch—or journalists—which we stupidly feel obligated to mention in order to appear unbiased. I don’t know of anyone who has yet found a genuinely perfect watch, even those who have the Buddhist-monk-like discipline of just owning a single one. 

So what was wrong with the previous generations of Nomos Tangente’s with date? Nothing, objectively speaking. They were gorgeous as they always have been; legible as the German brand knows how to make them; superbly finished as it is customary for them to be. A previous 37.5mm Tangente (ref. 135) with a white silver-plated dial came with a unique dual date complication and polished rhodium-plated hands. Another 35mm version (ref. 131) came with a matte white dial, a large date aperture at the six and power reserve indicator at the 12:30 ish. Again, both are excellent everyday dressy watches which, I’m sure, have made many people happy. But since Nomos is into tweaking every square micron of their watches with great minutia, they thought they ought to create the Tangente 38 Update reference 147 which comes with the brand’s bespoke ring date complication to retain the functionality of displaying the date whilst preserving dial symmetry, and oxidized black hands to guarantee superlative legibility. 

Spoiler alert: this is thus far my favorite iteration of the classic Nomos Tangente. 

Specifications 

Almost twenty years ago I bought a used Apple laptop, my very first one from the Californian brand, and it was so long ago that I don’t believe it was called a MacBook Pro. True, my memory doesn’t serve me very well and I’m so disinterested in technology that I cannot bother to fire a quick Google search to figure it out. I was attracted to Apple not because of the formidable technology their computers were endowed with, but principally for they were, and still are, minimalist in their appearance. I remember watching a video of the late Steve Jobs in which he explained how difficult it is to design seemingly simple-looking but high-performing machines, and I always appreciated their deceptive basic outward appearance underneath of which roars the good stuff. (I’m as far from being a techy as Mars is from Earth.) And though I’m a die-hard tool watch nerd, I occasionally wander off to discuss elegant timepieces and I’ve always been mystified by Nomos’ capacity to engineer high-tech timepieces which look objectively simple. 

Since I’ve reviewed a few of them however, for example the Tangente Classic in 35mm, Club Campus, and more recently, the Club Sport Neomatik Worldtimer, I do know that no one should judge their technical attributes from their aesthetics. All of them surprised me through their high-level of manufacturing and finishing which remains pretty much unmatched at their respective price points in my personal experience. And of course their in-house calibers which are becoming more and more remarkable each year. Thus the first point of interest of the Tangente Update 38 is the caliber within: the Nomos DUW 6101 movement which is a slim (3.6mm) and mean machine which ticks at 4Hz, comes with 50 hours of power reserve, and is equipped with the brand’s proprietary ring date complication whose mechanical prowess—and thus its unique placement—stems from its position around the outside the gear train instead of its center. The ring audibly clicks in place and its red portion frames the correct date and can be set forward or backward. 

I’m also as far from being an horological engineer as Donald Trump is from being presidential and presidentially competent (I do not apologize for being a tad political once in a blue moon,) thus I find it amazing to know that such a complex caliber inhabits a nimble and flat stainless steel case whose dimensions are 38.5mm in diameter, 47.3mm lug-to-lug (I never moaned about Nomos’ supposedly super long lugs,) 7.4mm in thickness, and 19mm lug width. Unsurprisingly to many of you I’m sure, for this type of watch and one paired with such a tiny vertical presence, we find 50 meters of water resistance paired with a 5.5mm push/pull crown and screw-down see-through sapphire case-back. The latter is so generously wide that we can easily admire the fantastic mechanics of the DUW 6101’s and its perlage and Côtes de Genève finishing as well as its blued screws and majestic rotor. Sapphire is also what equips the top crystal shaped into a perfectly flat surface complemented by several layers of inner anti-reflective coating. 

Design 

I won’t cease to be amazed by the flatness of Nomos’ elegant watches knowing what ticks inside. This is why earlier I said that I am mystified by the brand’s work in a way that has rarely occurred to me in my objectively nascent career as a nerdy watch journalist. What is further a source of amazement is the fact that the German brand distilled the Bauhaus design codes down to a science, transforming what could have been ultra boring dials into flat surfaces from which emanate a ton of personality. Going a little further in this train of thought, one could say that Nomos brewed the perfect recipe for a case profile and dimension ratio to perfectly match what’s going on below the crystal, as it displays a rare balance of the what-is-enough in the visual interest department. A tiny bit of the latter as we’re about to see, and together the case + dial combo forms the ultimate iteration of an elegant timepiece. But there is more: the date ring complication adds the final element of sophistication the Tangente line lacked before. 

From the center of the white silver-plated dial we are met with the brand’s logo and collection name printed above the pinion, the latter in a shimmering gold color. Below the pinion and adjacent to the oxidized needle-shaped black hands—which are crisply legible to a delight—Nomos placed a sunken running seconds sub-register whose tiny hand received the same surface treatment for the same effect. Towards the periphery of the dial there is a formation of large markers displaying an alternation of Arabic numerals and long batons marking the hours, printed sharply in black paint, then a simple minute track where each minute is represented by thin hash-marks and the five-minute increments by thicker ones. Beyond the latter we reach the ring date complication, as if we had crossed a wide valley and summited a snow-capped mountain, which presents small numerals indicating the 31 days of a standard month interspersed between 31 rounded cut-outs through which the bright red portion of the ring pops to frame the current date. Genius. 

And the case of the Tangente 38 Update is no less fascinating to study and once again through this review. (We already discovered it in the 35mm version a few years back.) Just like my old or current Apple laptops, the nimble stainless steel body of the Nomos shows a dash of personality whilst being de facto simple in its appearance, which both supports the now more intricate dial layout of the 38 Update (compared to the time-only versions of other Tangente’s) and perfectly complements it. A small and fully polished crown flanking the east side of the case, equipped with utilitarian-style knurling, complements a fully polished case whose side profile is dominated by slab-sided flanks surmounted by a narrow and short polished bezel which sits a couple of microns in from it. Glancing at the bottom of the case we can easily see the polished angled edges of the case-back which lead us to the glorious see-through sapphire portion of it we already gushed over. Lastly: ant-like plunging lugs which elegantly wrap around the wrist.

This watch is a whole thing of its own! 

The Heart of the Matter

With the Nomos Tangente 38 Update ref. 147, the popular Glashütte brand didn’t seem to wish to reinvent a well-oiled machine it made its own three decades ago when it first introduced the Tangente collection to the world, but instead to incrementally improve upon the previous generations which have joined the ranks of this classic line of watches over time. Through small visual updates and massive technical ones, Nomos cracked the code to make a watch design become timeless and to preserve the authenticity, as well as the uniqueness, of a collection throughout the decades, without ever abandoning its essence. Even though Nomos has played with dial colors and textures, as well as case dimensions and materials, in the past few years, it has pretty much left the core design of the Tangente collection intact and instead figured out that it could create novelty in what is classic not by changing the way it looks but by improving what’s going on beneath the dial and inside the case. In other words: unique in-house calibers. 

That is what makes the Tangente 38 Update so interesting to me as we’re living a bizarre moment in watchmaking in which brands are convinced that, in order to stand out, they have to come up with crazy designs or dial and case materials better suited for space exploration than traditional watchmaking. In a way, Nomos shows that it has big coroñes by working so diligently hard to preserve such a classic family of watches which clashes with our stupid horological zeitgeist. 

Conclusion 

Nomos has been around since 1990 and released the first iteration of the Tangente in 1992. That’s 34 years of gentle face-lifting, manufacturing fine-tuning, and of preserving the core visual identity of a type of watch nobody knew they needed in the nineties let alone today. Even though I was impressed by, albeit skeptical of, the dual-date complication of ref. 135, it was a little too much for my taste. The Tangente 38 Update ref. 147 however is just perfect: the right dimensions for a modern elegant timepiece and incredible in-house technology complemented by a classically-styled, symmetrical, and legible dial. Should you be keen on adding this model to your personal collection, then you will have to deposit $4,690 USD to Nomos’ bank account. That’s “it.” 

Thanks for reading.