Introducing the Nomos Minimatik with the new DUW 3001 in-house movement (Live photos, specs & price)

While we’re more used here, at Monochrome-Watches, to review complicated watches, we have kind of a crush for a (rather) affordable brand coming from Glashütte, Germany: Nomos. Nothing here about crazy complications or handsome hand finishes. However, Nomos brings some interesting watches, superbly crafted and designed, together with a remarkable technological content – for a very decent price. Their latest creation, introduced during Baselworld 2015, makes no exceptions to the rule. It’s named the Nomos Minimatik and it comes with the manufacture’s new, slim, automatic in-house movement, the calibre DUW 3001.

The Nomos Minimatik

In an industry that tends to create huge and overly designed watches – sometimes with no reasons – Nomos keeps doing its thing: strict timepieces with small diameters. However, the brand might be inspired by the architectural trend ‘Bauhaus‘ (a minimalistic school of design), it also has this little something, a small dose of craziness that creates easily recognizable watches. Just look at the brand’s website and their advertising campaigns and you’ll understand this point. Their latest creation, the Nomos Minimatik, is all about the brand’s DNA, meaning a small, slim, strict watch with just enough boldness to create an appealing product.

The Nomos Minimatik brings back the same design clues than, for example, the Zurich Weltzeit or the Ahoi, but here with a more round and young design. While the previous creations of the brand were coming with a strict and squared shape, this Minimatik has more curves. The 35.5mm case can be seen as small but, in fact, it suits a man’s or a woman’s wrist perfectly. The strength of Nomos is to never succumb to the temptation of large watches – and obviously, once strapped, it works. Not only the Nomos Minimatik has a restrained diameter but it also comes with a reasonable height of 8.6mm – due to the movement, but we’ll get back on this later. These dimensions, together with a comfortable Horween Genuine Shell Cordovan strap, participates to the discretion and comfort.

This Minimatik also brings a note of fresh air and a younger feeling with colorful touches, for the indexes and the hands. The hour numerals and dots are blue and the three hands dark red. The colours are slightly more eccentric compare to the usual black and white scheme of Nomos, but remains discreet. It’s all about details.

The new in-house DUW 3001 movement

Nomos already has several own movements in its collections, as for instance the complicated automatic calibre Epsilon that can be found in the Zurich Weltzeit or the superbly finished DUW 1001 / 2002 of the Nomos Lux and Lambda (in an other price range however). They also announced in 2014 the in-house production of the escapement modules – balance wheel, hairspring and escapement – known as the Nomos Swing System. It’s rather impressive to see a brand like Nomos producing all these elements in-house, especially because the investments required are huge. However, since the Swatch ébauche moratorium (ETA stopping to deliver movements to third parties), brands like Nomos have no other choice to out-source from ETA-clones manufactures or to create their own movements. This situation usually leads to a tremendous increase of the production prices, and thus, to a larger retail price. This could have been the case with Nomos – but no!

The Nomos Minimatik comes with a brand new movement, the calibre DUW 3001 – also shared by the Tangente collection. Once again, we’re in front of a fully in-house engine, from the gear train to the escapement module. More used to manual winding calibres, Nomos now comes with an automatic edition, that despite this extra-feature, remains extremely slim at 3.2mm, allowing the watches fitted with this movement to have a very decent height – usually bellow 9mm.

The Calibre DUW 3001 measures 28.8mm (a huge diameter considering the small cases that creates a nice view from the caseback). The finishes are clean and pleasant, with Glashütte ribbing on the 3/4 plate, perlage on the main plate, tempered blue screws and (machined) polished bevelled angles. Of course, it comes with Nomos swing system with tempered blue balance spring and it is adjusted in 6-positions. It boasts 42 hours of power reserve and ticks at 21.600 bph.

Now comes THE question. All of this content might be expensive compared to the classical collections of Nomos, because, clearly, you’ll get quite an interesting package. In fact, Nomos even achieved to keep a reasonable price, as the Nomos Minimatik will be priced at 2.800 Euros (available this fall).

More to discover on Nomos Official Website.