This watch isn’t exactly new but recently made some headlines by winning the prestigious Golden Unruh (golden balance) award by one of Germany’s top watch magazines as voted by the public. You can see how people could like this watch. It is very pretty, and as I will discuss, it has some awesome mechanics behind it. The design is pretty classic, but has a polished sense of refinement that makes it a bit sexy, and very refined. Part of this is due to the fat leaf style hands that look nice against the thin and demure baton hour markers.

H. Moser & Cie is perhaps a brand you haven’t heard of before. They are a smaller company, but I have been noticing more and more advertising from them – so they are getting orders or funding from somewhere. Actually, I understand that H. Moser is one of the people that helped make IWC what it is. The connection between IWC and Moser isn’t exactly great these days as I understand it. It is true that as a smaller brand with a very complex watch – quality control issues are going to be of concern. At the same time, given the popularity of the piece, combined with the fact that it has been around for a few years, it is likely that H. Moser & Cie has been able to work some of the  kinks out of the mechanism. The movement is all in-house made.

The unique manually wound HMC341  movement has a power reserve of 7 days, a power reserve indicator on the dial, and a perpetual calendar. Have you ever seen a more neatly integrated perpetual calendar mechanism before? Plus, the perpetual calendar is really complex because it can be set forwards and backwards. I also think that you have no mechanical penalties for adjusting the calendar anytime of day. The beautifully designed face has two large leaf-shaped hands and a smaller center arrow hand. That smaller hand is a month indicator (using the hours markers to indicate the 12 months). Then you have a power reserve indicator balanced out by the date on the opposite end. While the date is not a “big date,” the disc has larger font so it looks like one almost. Then you have a large subsidiary seconds dial on the face. Just marvelous. On the rear of the watch you have a leap year indicator on the movement. That is it, how cool? A fully functional perpetual calendar that is barely noticeable.

The case is very interesting in design. Lots of nice organic curves. Pretty medium in size at just under 41mm in width. Available in white or rose gold, and in platinum. A few dial colors are available as well. It looks great in all of them in my opinion. Crystals are of course sapphire, and the case is water resistant to 30 meters. The straps are alligator. While the price for the platinum version is more, the H. Moser & Cie Perpetual 1 watch costs about 22,000 euros. Really going to be a winner for lots of people. And now a few years after its release, some of the apparent technical issues have been more or less smoothed out. I look forward to checking one out.