In the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme Lab 2 watch is the in-house made Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 780 or 781 automatic movement. Why two movement options? One is for the titanium version, and one is for the gold version, and there are some slightly different parts. Essentially, they are the same, even though they don’t have the exact name amount of parts – and they happen to be wildly impressive. The 781 movement is comprised of 566 parts, while the caliber 780 has 596 parts. With 60 hours of power reserve, the automatic rotor (mounted on ceramic ball bearings) has a platinum weight for winding efficiency.
Using a silicon escapement, the balance wheel has an interesting movement limiter to protect it, which I believe is similar to the SpringLock system developed by Ball watches. The balance wheel operates at 28,800 (4Hz), and the accuracy of the movement is claimed to be very good. Having said that, lets not kid ourselves, despite the “extreme” nature of the watch, nothing with this level of complexity and over 550 parts is going to perform like a workhorse. I fully anticipate Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme Lab 2 watches to work hard, play hard, and service hard when the watch needs it. At the same time, if anyone other than Jaeger-LeCoultre even attempted to produce a movement like the caliber 781 or 780, it would probably become a miniature, non-functioning mechanical sculpture after a few months.
No doubt, there are likely to have been some details about the Jaeger-LeCoultre Extreme Lab 2 that I missed in my discussion, but maybe that is a good thing, so that somewhere down the line, I can write about it for a third time. While Jerome Lambert was CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre, I would have fully expected an Extreme Lab 3 to be on the horizon, but under its new management, I am not sure what the company has planned for the future. In any event, I hope that these intense looking and highly modern sport watches with innovative in-house movements are part of it.
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme Lab 2 is a heartthrob of a timepiece and matches what I love in high-end watches on so many levels. Not only does it look cool, but it looks very much “right now,” and it also has a lot to discuss and admire from a mechanical perspective. As of writing, there are a few of these left on the market, and I fully expect for the Jaeger-LeCoultre Extreme Lab 2 to be a collector’s piece down the road. Current price for the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Extreme Lab 2 ref. 203T540 in titanium is $55,500, and the 18k red gold ref. 2032570 is $67,400. jaeger-lecoultre.com
