Written by Praneeth Rajsingh

Known primarily for their minimalist designs, Nomos has always prided itself on being a high-quality, stylish mechanical watch at a price that isn’t unattainable. For Baselworld 2017, the brand is doubling down with the introduction of the Nomos Club Campus watch, based off the Club, Nomos’ current entry-level watch. You can take a guess as to who the target audience is, and Nomos specifically mentions people who have just graduated college and are stepping into the professional world. The appeal hinges on design, the in-house movement, the fact that Nomos is “hip” right now, competetive pricing, and the fact that each caseback allows for a custom engraving.

The Nomos Club Campus trio includes a couple different sizes, with the smallest called just the “Nomos Club Campus.” At 36mm, this model has a white silver-plated dial with gray Super-LumiNova numerals and indexes with a red outline – that, being so thin, achieves a pinkish appearance. It is probably safe to say that this would work fine as a ladies’ watch. The Nomos Club 38 Campus is next in line with a 38mm case with white dial and blue Super-LumiNova numerals and indexes, again with a red outline. The “black sheep” of the group, is the Nomos Club 38 Campus Nacht, with Nomos’ signature ruthenium-plated dial with the lume in beige this time and with a blue outline. The only other significant difference is that the 36mm Nomos Club Campus ships with a gray velour strap while the other two 38mm watches ship with an anthracite strap.

All three Nomos Club Campus watches are based on the Alpha caliber, a manual-wind, in-house movement also found in the current Club, Tangente, and Tetra models. With 43 hours of power reserve and Nomos’ usual Glashütte finishing on the ¾ mainplate, it’s a classic and tested Nomos movement. Of course, you won’t get to see it, as there’s no exhibition caseback but again, the idea is that you get the caseback engraved. A small but quirky design feature, not unique to Nomos but still cool-looking, is the “California dial,” meaning Arabic numerals in the top half of the dial and Roman numerals in the bottom half.

Nomos CEO Uwe Ahrendt says the Campus series is essentially being subsidized since the watches target the people who are likely to make up the future customer base of the watch market. There is no word on pricing yet, but all signs point at the Campus series being priced lower than the existing Club, which if true, represents a significant value proposition that is hard to beat. The watches will be available at retailers and Nomos’ online store by the end of the month. nomos-glashuette.com