While the brand’s penchant for pared-back, minimal design is obvious, there’s always been an undercurrent of fun in the NOMOS product line. The German brand balances its Bauhaus-style simplicity of design with a love of playful color, offbeat details, and a joyfully different way of looking at watchmaking as a whole. For its latest release, NOMOS takes this love of fun into a new complication, presenting both a traditional 6 o’clock date window and an outer pointer-esque date display to celebrate (in the brand’s words) “the art of dating.” The new NOMOS Tangente 2Date isn’t the most ruthlessly practical design in the brand’s lineup, instead combining classic NOMOS styling with, impressive build quality, a new in-house movement, and a proudly emotion-driven approach to displaying the time and date.

At 37.5mm wide, the NOMOS Tangente 2Date’s stainless steel case is an intermediate point in the Tangente lineup, which gives the brand’s already adaptable case geometry an impressively broad range of wrist sizes to fit well. The fully polished overall form here is pure Tangente, with the series’ signature angled straight lugs and a compellingly slim, ultra-minimal cylindrical main case. A svelte 6.8mm overall thickness keeps the overall elegance of the design intact, but it’s the careful consideration of the way this thickness is presented that truly impresses. Thanks to a completely flat, heavily anti-reflective sapphire crystal, the case profile is kept starkly and perfectly geometric, which combined with the solidly executed overall polishing lends the watch a subtle but highly effective sense of overall quality. In keeping with the Tangente line’s Bauhaus-style simplicity, the bezel here is flat, polished, and razor-thin, giving the 2Date a refined all-dial look on the wrist. Around back, the Tangente 2Date is available with either a sapphire display caseback or a simple polished back, with both offering a less-than-stellar 50 meters of water resistance.

Naturally, the centerpiece of the NOMOS Tangente 2Date’s dial is its unique, joyfully impractical double date display. In addition to the more conventional, beveled trapezoidal date window at 6 o’clock (which, in keeping with the brand’s fanatical attention to detail, uses Tangente-style serif Arabic numerals that have been subtly reproportioned to better fill out this trapezoidal form), the 2Date’s signature dish is its sandwich-style outer date ring. Each of the 31 printed days of the month is flanked by a pair of lozenge-shaped, dial-matching slots. The current date is surrounded by a pair of indicators in a contrasting color, essentially framing the current date with a vibrant accent. Is it strictly necessary, or even practical? No, but in practice the two date displays give two slightly different effects on the wrist. Naturally, the 6 o’clock standard date is precise and instantly legible, keeping the crucial information of the current date easily at hand. The outer date ring, though, is more about tracking the overall progression of the month. It’s a clean, graphic way of reminding oneself of how close the next paycheck, rent payment, or other monthly milestone might be, inviting a more abstract and broad-ranging way of thinking about the date. Philosophical questions aside, though, the real benefit of the 2Date design is that it’s just plain fun. This is NOMOS’s trademark dash of humor ingrained deeper than ever before into its watchmaking, dictating its own complication in the process.

Beyond the novel double date concept, the rest of this dial design should be familiar to fans of the brand. Available in either a sunburst navy blue with white accents or our sample’s grained matte silver dial, the Tangente 2Date broadly cleaves to the Tangente series standard. Crisp, slender, and slightly offbeat printed black Arabic serif numerals coexist with minimalist line indices, further accented by a light and airy outer minutes scale. The ultra-simple polished stick handset keeps the focus squarely on the new complication during wear, while the 6 o’clock running seconds subdial’s recessed azurage treatment gives this dial just enough depth and texture to keep from feeling unfinished or ascetic. Like many other Tangente models, though, it’s the brand’s judicious use of accent color that really puts the 2Date over the edge. The rich, vibrant red used for both the date numerals and the sandwich-style outer date indicators gives the silver dial model a restrained but effective punch, further emphasizing the new additions to the design.

Of course, with a new date complication comes a new movement, and the manufacture DUW 4601 hand-wound movement inside the NOMOS Tangente 2Date offers one of the brand’s most impressive visual spectacles to date. In keeping with the brand’s modernized take on classically German movement architecture, the caseback view of the DUW 4601 is dominated by a broad three-quarter plate and a separate balance cock. There’s an impressively thoughtful, finely executed approach to finishing here, with sunburst-style striping centered on the balance wheel and accented by polished anglage, blued screws, a double radially striped ratchet wheel, and a small, trapezoidal balance cock cutout designed to maximize the view of the balance wheel at work. What might appear at first glance to be a massive striped movement spacer is actually a separate movement plate for the new outer date display, complete with six ruby bearings to evenly distribute friction around the circumference of the movement and prevent potential wobbling.

Assembling the new in-house DUW 4601 movement at the brand’s factory in Glashütte, Germany.

Performance figures for the DUW 4601 are more of a mixed bag, however. The 52-hour power reserve and 21,600 bph beat rate are solidly middle-of-the-road in this market segment. On the other hand, while the brand does not typically state overall accuracy figures, NOMOS movements almost universally run near or within chronometer-grade accuracy standards. To complete the design, NOMOS fits the watch with an impressively rich, supple, and glossy Horween shell cordovan leather strap in simple black. Interestingly, NOMOS also lines the inner side of these straps with shell cordovan leather, which should lead to a very hard-wearing, durable, and luxurious-feeling strap in the long term.

Hand-finishing ratchet wheels for the DUW 4601 movement at the brand’s factory in Glashütte, Germany.

The combination of sharp, finely considered minimalism with an irrepressible love of fun is part of what has made NOMOS a fan-favorite brand among enthusiasts. It’s a fine, difficult balance to strike. However, the NOMOS Tangente 2Date sees the German marque tread this balance better than nearly any other watch in its lineup thanks to its handsomely modern base design, striking in-house movement, finely considered use of accent color, and a complication that throws strict utilitarianism to the wind in favor of a more emotional way of looking at the date. The NOMOS Tangente 2Date is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this watch stands at 2,360 Euro with a solid caseback (Reference 135.SB) and 2,580 Euro with a display back (Reference 135), as of press time. For more details, please visit the NOMOS website.