Hands-On: Four Flavors of the Nomos Tangente 38 Date Limited Editions

Earlier this year, Nomos released thirty-one separate limited edition versions of their Tangente 38 Date. If you ask most collectors and enthusiasts, the Tangente is the brand’s most recognizable design, and is usually found in somewhat staid and traditional colorways. That’s what made these limited editions so interesting. Here, all of a sudden, were thirty-one widely different and colorful executions of a design that many of us know like the back of our hand.

We recently had four different examples of these LEs pass through our office, so we thought it would be a good excuse to send these watches out to our contributors to get their take. Here are first impressions from contributors Nathan Schultz, Griffin Bartsch, and Chris Antzoulis, as well as Managing Editor Zach Kazan.

Nathan Schultz – Mauvegrün

In just a few short years, Nomos transitioned from one of those best kept secret brands to becoming a prominent fan-favorite. Yet, as my enthusiast peers seemed to grow more excited with each minimalist release, my personal feelings toward the brand have remained relatively lukewarm. Don’t get me wrong, I find the elegant Bauhaus design at the center of their entire catalog to be charming. It’s just… subdued. Prior to Watches and Wonders 2024, their most exciting line was probably the Metro which features a colorful small seconds hand. But when the most vibrant (if you could call it that) dial is actually called “muted” red, it’s fair to say garnering excitement was not a top priority for this German brand known for craftsmanship and in-house movements. 

With a well-established positive standing among collectors, Nomos didn’t necessarily have a reason to cater to someone like me that prioritizes smiles per dollar above all else. In fact, I would argue that such a change would run the unnecessary risk of alienating a loyal fan base that values a very specific design language over color and experimentation. But my crystal ball is often out of whack, and like the rest of the watch community, I was shocked when they released 31 colorful new dials with one thing in common: fun. Scrolling through the Nomos website used to resemble strolling the clearance section of clocks at Target littered with creamy colorways, minimal text and three un-lumed hands. Head to the Nomos site now, and it feels more like walking past the wall of paint swatches at a home improvement store. And, like a child inspired to stuff their pockets, I suddenly wanted each and every one.

We’ve all been fooled by deceptively colorful photos online before. And so, while I was open to renouncing my Scrooge-like opinions, I wasn’t swearing off ba-humbugs without hands-on experience. When the Mauvegrün variant arrived, I unboxed it while sitting next to my patient wife. I say patient because she is constantly listening to my horological ramblings, as are my kids, though they would be perfectly content if I never showed them another watch again. But as I removed the Tangente 38 from its packaging, she did something completely unexpected: she asked me to pass it over, even sharing compliments about the color and size. Shortly after, with the comfortably slim case strapped to my wrist, we took a family walk under the afternoon sun. Along the way, I noticed my son twisting my wrist and watching the reflections change. He is used to me wearing tool watches not known for light play, and the plentiful polished surfaces had caught his eye.

Color is hot right now, and I’m certainly not the only collector searching for watches that offer some level of excitement. Creating bold dials that are in stark contrast to previously understated offerings was a risky move with the potential to feel like a cash grab. However, Nomos managed to take on the challenge in a way that felt authentic to their design language and did so without abandoning the minimalist allure that already won over so many collectors. With this risk, they finally won over my stubborn hold-out heart too. For years, I steered away from NOMOS because it didn’t bring me joy, but it’s hard not to appreciate a watch capable of bringing joy not only to me but also to those around me.

Griffin Bartsch – Super Sardine 

Some of you may remember that, all the way back in January, I mentioned that one of my watch collecting goals for 2024 was to finally add a Nomos to my collection. That hasn’t happened (at least not yet), but I have gotten to spend the last few days with a Nomos on my wrist and it has more than reminded me of why I wanted one in the first place.

Nomos is one of those brands I consistently find myself recommending to people outside the watch hobby, and offerings like the Tangente 38 Super Sardine are an excellent example of why. If you’re looking to get one nice watch, the Tangente 38 is the perfect choice. It’s dressy enough to wear with a suit and looks great hanging around happy hour on a Friday in jeans and vans — kind of like the ultimate grown-up version of the Timex Weekender (though far more refined and well-executed).

I’ve often said that if you’re in deep enough to know the term ‘one watch guy,’ it’s probably too late for you to ever be one, but wearing a Nomos makes it easy to imagine getting close. The Tangente 38 offers up just about everything you could want from a watch. It’s amazingly well-finished (especially for the price), thin, comfortable, and comes in just about any colorway you could imagine.

For this exercise, I was sent the Super Sardine, a handsome grayish-blue option with accents in cream and red, and a bold blue small seconds sub-dial. Out of the 31 dial options Nomos released for the Tangente 38 earlier this year, the Super Sardine stood out because, to my eye, it was the perfect balance between the many faces of Nomos. It also nails the details.

From the ever-so-slight serif on the dial numerals to the expansive color-matched date wheel, this seemingly simple watch is replete with happy little details. But that attention is not strictly limited to the dial side of the watch. Flip the Tangente 38 over and you’ll find the same level of care and focus present in the chronometer-adjusted, in-house caliber DUW 4101.

 

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German watchmaking has long been a haven for the finishing-obsessed, and looking at the Nomos’s DUW 4101, it’s no wonder why. The rhodium-plated movement offers all the hallmarks and details you could ask for, with the three-quarter plate (a signature of Glashütte watchmaking) handsomely decorated with plenty of striping, the barrels beautifully snailed, and an abundance of heat-blued screws making for a really pleasing movement. There’s even some anglage thrown in for good measure.

Some collectors might complain that this in-house movement, which also includes Nomos’s own Nomod swing-system escapement, lacks a traditional quick-set date, but this isn’t a watch meant to have the date adjusted all that often. This is a watch meant to serve as a constant companion, one which will be on your wrist day in and day out, lovingly wound each morning. My guess is, if Nomos had their way, the most you’d ever have to advance the date window is from 28 to 1 — or 29 to 1 in leap years. And after almost a week with the Tangente 38, I’m inclined to think they’re on to something.

Zach Kazan – Rambazamba

Nomos, for me and likely for many others in our hobby, was one of the first enthusiast focused brands I came across on the forums when my interest in watches was beginning to take shape. The trajectory is familiar: you start out with Casios, Seikos, and the like, move on to the entry-level Swiss brands (for me it was Hamilton, but it could just as easily be Tissot, Oris, or even Tudor if the “entry-level” definition is somewhat elastic), and then you start doing-your-own-research, as it were, taking sharper turns through enthusiast communities, actively looking for something that is certified approved by the people who know much, much more than you, but is also approachable from a pricing standpoint and a bit inside baseball. Nomos fits the bill perfectly. Not a household name, but beloved among collectors, and accessible once you flip a few early collecting mistakes. 

I’m dating myself a bit here by describing Nomos in hidden-gem terminology, something that was common a decade ago but less of a thing these days. Nomos has been properly discovered, and their current collection reflects that they are courting a customer that sits well outside the dedicated, nose-in-the-air enthusiast. This, remember, used to be a brand that prided itself on the 35mm case, for their core models, being standard. Nomos makes (a lot) of proper sports watches these days, with cases in 41 and 42mm across their model families, something that their most ardent supporters not too long ago would have aggressively scoffed at. They also play with color a lot more than they used to. Yes, there have always been smatterings of color here and there on Nomos references, particularly when they’d release a limited edition, but they never really strayed that far from a certain teutonic sobriety. While the classic (iconic, even) silvered dials are still front and center, Nomos has increasingly shown themselves to be willing to experiment with bright, primary colors.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the brand’s decision to release 31 separate limited edition versions of the Tangente 38 Date for this year’s big Watches & Wonders drop. They point to what feels like a very different side of the brand than the one a lot of us were introduced to. The color combinations (and the names the brand has come up with for each) have a zaniness about them that’s unexpected but extremely welcome. 

If you scroll through the entire selection of this crop of limited editions, you might notice that a disproportionate number of them incorporate orange and/or red tones. The Rambazamba, the Tangente 38 Date I’ve been wearing for the last week or so, has a dial that’s definitely on the red sign of orange. I set it next to my Tactile Turn “Safety First” pen, which in my mind is the reference orange, and it’s definitely quite a bit redder. 

I like the dial quite a bit, but being a step or two removed from a definitive red, it’s not exactly the most versatile piece. This, of course, is not the point. The Tangente 38 Date limited editions are designed to be statement making above all else. On this front, I think other dial variants are probably more successful, largely because Rambazamba doesn’t experiment with contrast quite as effectively as its colorful counterparts. The watches in this collection that really stick out to me are the ones that are using three or more colors on the dial in interesting and unexpected ways (such as accenting the date window, running seconds subdial, hour markers or Arabic numerals in colors that could potentially clash, but don’t). Rambazamba’s dial is uniform throughout, with an off-white accent at the outer minute track.

That said, wearing this watch around a bit has reignited my personal interest in Nomos. I’ve owned several Nomos watches over the years, but they never seem to stay in my collection, which is odd because I genuinely like so much about their design and the brand’s ethos. To date, however, I’ve never owned a truly colorful Nomos reference, and now that there are so many new options (not necessarily as part of this LE collection) I’m thinking a colorful Club, or maybe an Ahoi, could be in the cards. 

Chris Antzoulis – Poporange

I’m at the stage of my watch collecting journey where I find myself looking for the perfect combination of art and purposeful simplicity in my watches, and there are few brands that exemplify this more than Nomos. I own the 38mm Club Campus in Endless Blue already, so I was excited by the opportunity to try out one of the new limited edition Tangente models. The colorway I received was the Poporange, and although the wearing experience is a bit different from my Club Campus, it still exudes Nomos charm and unique styling.

 The first thing I noticed about the Tangente, when it comes to wearing experience, is that it’s very flat. And unlike the Club Campus, which is also thin and flat, the lines are level and not rounded. So, it rests truly flat on the wrist. The lugs also jut out in the way they do with all Nomos watches, but they have a more industrial downturn to them, and the bottom of the end of the lugs are almost flush with the bottom of the case, adding to how flat the watch is when it rests on your wrist. So, there’s no curvature at all.

 I personally love how the watch sits and looks on my wrist. At around 7.6 inches, my wrist can easily carry the lug-to-lug distance of 47.7mm, and I think the watch looks sharp, and is comfortable. I’m also somebody who loves to wear loads of color, and the Poporange colorway has a nice rustic appeal to it, dare I say boho coffee shop vibes (or so says my barista). The orange is vibrant, but not blinding, and as pleasant as it is indoors, it’s even more so out in the sun. The matte orange really emanates from the dial, and the brighter orange sub register almost shimmers, all in stark contrast to the simplistic Bauhaus design on the dial. 

 The dial on the Poporange is fun, nostalgic (at least for me), and out there. I asked a friend who’s not really into watches, and who is new to Nomos as a brand, what they’d think if they saw someone wearing this piece. “I would think they’d thought about it. Like that watch was a conscious decision. And then I’d look at their shoes to see if they matched.”  Admittedly that last remark was likely directed at me as they know I always match my sneakers to my watches, and I did that today with the Nomos Tangente as well. But, I agree with the assessment. The colors and styling of these Tangente limited editions are personal. It’s such a departure from the options that we typically have with watches, that whatever color you’ve chosen, is somehow meaningful or suited to you. And while this Tangente Poporange was not a choice I’d made, it’s a color I chose to wear intentionally once I got it, by molding my outfits around it and elevating myself to its charm. Nomos