Just this week I was talking about how brands use limited editions to launch brand-new regular production models! And then, BOOM! Mühle Glashütte goes and does it. It’s nice to be so promptly proven right. Mühle Glashütte is one of a number of brands manufactured in the eponymous German town of Glashütte. You probably know Nomos, A. Lange & Söhne, and Glashütte Original a bit better, but MG is one of the older brands located there, having been founded in 1869 and most recently relaunched in 2007. Best known for its sport and tool watches, the brand has just released a brand new model in its Sportivo line, the Mühle Glashütte Sportivo Power Chronograph First Edition.

The Sportivo collection has a sleeker case design than the chunkier 29er maritime watches or the retro-weird S.A.R. watches. The 42.5mm stainless steel case is black PVD coated ( the brand says ion plating, but it’s the same thing) with a 15.5mm height and a 50.3mm lug-to-lug. That’s to say, this is not a small watch, but its automatic chronograph and modern styling seem to somewhat justify the proportions. The squared lug box is a signature of the Sportivo collection that we usually see on skin divers (or Glycine Combats). The crown guards and chronograph pushers form a nice polished arc around the crown, which creates contrast with the matte case and harmony with the ceramic inlay of the bidirectional bezel (this is a sports watch, not a dive watch). The watch has 300m of water resistance and a sapphire crystal, and completing the package is a water-resistant black leather strap with red contrast stitching and PVD pin buckle, attached to what appear to be drilled lugs with a screwed spring bar. I appreciate the water resistance of the leather, but given the sportiness of the design, I might be more comfortable with some rubber or textile strap instead.

The dial of the Sportivo Power Chronograph is a bit of a departure for the Sportivo line. The rest of the line features blue and grey dials with bright pops of green, orange, and blue, giving them a much lighter feeling than this one. There’s something almost menacing about black and red. Chalk it up to too many scary movies, but I have trouble taking watches with this colorway very seriously. Mühle Glashütte is doing its best, though the very finely textured matte-black dial has enormous Super-LumiNova-filled hands and applied markers to match; you could probably tell the time from across the room with this thing. A red chapter ring encircles the dial and is complemented by red hands on the central chrono seconds and the 30-minute totalizer at 12 o’clock. The registers on this watch have a novel take, with raised labels at 12 and 6 and radial grooving filling the rest of their surface; at a glance, they remind me of the Robot Aerodynamic’s dial. The dial is finished off with the namesake power reserve at 6 o’clock.

To enable the chronograph with a power reserve function (and its position on the dial), MG uses the new automatic MU 9244 movement, based on the MU 9413, which itself uses a Swiss Sellita SW500. But the base SW500 movement is heavily modified in-house, including reworking the mainspring barrel and baseplate, swapping in the brand’s patented woodpecker regulator, and mounting a 19-piece power reserve module. The brand also regulates the movements to 0/+8 seconds per day and quotes a power reserve of 62 hours at 28,800 vph. I think this may be the most impressive part of the watch: Despite not having the cachet of some of its neighbors, Mühle Glashütte heavily modifies almost every movement it uses, including with patented components.

While I’m no fan of the color scheme, I quite like the balance of the dial here. Mühle Glashütte clearly put the time in to make sure the power reserve indicator wasn’t a haphazard addition crowding the dial. Instead, you get evenly spaced indicators balanced by the logo. The substantial movement work is a cherry on top. As ever, I’m more excited by the introduction of a new model than this particular version of the model. Given how MG has played with color in the Sportivo line, I’m eager to see what they do with this one. The Mühle Glashütte Sportivo Power Chronograph First Edition is priced at €4,300 EUR and is limited to 200 pieces. For more information, please visit the Mühle Glashütte website.