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Maen has announced a new version of their popular Manhattan integrated bracelet sports watch, the 37 Ultra-Thin. This reference fills out the Manhattan collection, which also consists of watches with automatic movements in both 40mm and 37mm sizes, as well as ultra-thin (manually wound) watches in 39mm and, as of today, the smaller 37mm footprint. Maen has taken the somewhat unusual approach with this release of introducing a brand new dial texture along with it, as opposed to a more standard dial execution.
I reviewed the first iteration of Maen’s ultra-thin last year and was impressed with the thin wearing experience and the solid built quality of the case and bracelet. That’s really the key in ultra-thin watches, I think. If you feel like the watch is going to snap in half and break at the bend of a wrist, it really saps the charm out of the whole experience. This is why the impossibly, wafer thin executions of the Bulgari Octo Finissimo are so impressive, and also confounding. They appear to defy the laws of physics, but on the wrist, they still feel solid, leaving the impression they can be worn confidently doing normal day-to-day things, for the most part.
The Manhattan is not on the same level horologically speaking as the Octo, of course, but they operate under similar principles and have to defy similar concerns. I haven’t tested out the new 37mm version of Maen’s ultra-thin Manhattan, but I have spent time with every other iteration of the Manhattan, all of which impress with their general fit and finish, so I wouldn’t expect this latest version to be any different. I also think there’s probably some merit to releasing this watch in a smaller size. While the 39mm version worked well on my wrist, it’s so thin and so flat that I suspect on smaller wrists it would have a tendency to wear rather larger. Integrated bracelet watches, in general, tend to wear a bit larger than the measurements indicate, so 37mm for an integrated bracelet sports watch conceived to be as thin as possible sounds fairly neutral.
In terms of specs, the 37 Ultra-Thin comes in at just 7.1mm tall. That’s actually a very tiny bit taller than the 39mm, which measures in at 6.9mm, but I think it’s fair to say that the difference in case thickness will likely be negligible on the wrist, and can be chalked up to ensuring the smaller case meets Maen’s basic standards for robustness and structural integrity. It runs on the same manually wound ETA 7001 caliber as its slightly larger sibling.
The dials, as mentioned, represent something new for Maen. They call it a “Tuscan” dial, and is meant to evoke a hand hammered style of dial finishing that is adjacent to traditional tremblage but not quite as finely rendered. Again, I haven’t seen this watch in person, but this type of dial texture, when machine made, often looks quite artificial. These Maen supplied images would indicate the dials are quite texture forward and that the effect is not subtle. Maen has also decided to incorporate a running seconds subdial at 6:00 for this version of the Manhattan (it was quite thoughtfully removed from the 39mm version), which makes the smaller dial feel a bit more cluttered than what we’ve seen in previous efforts. I’m a fan of Maen’s Geneva stripe dials that have been used in this collection previously, and have come to think of them as something of a brand signature, so that might have been my preference for these watches, at least for the first batch. That said, the dial execution here easily differentiates the watch from others in the Manhattan collection, which Maen has expressed was part of the design goal with this watch.
The new Maen Manhattan 37 Ultra-Thin has a retail price of EUR 1039. Orders open on June 23. Maen
