Nomos Introduces the Tetra Neomatik

Nomos is a brand that should need little introduction on w&w. A staff and crowd favorite, Nomos’ watches exude style, elegance and value like no other brand. Made in Glashütte, these in-house beauties are in a class of their own, something a mere glance at pieces like the Orion 38 Datum, Club and Metro will surely make obvious. Last year at Baselworld, Nomos announced a new watch, the Minimatik, but more significantly, a new movement; the DUW 3001. This ultra-thin automatic suggested a lot of great things to come, watches that would maintain the pure lines and restrained case dimensions of their existing hand-wound watches, but add the convenience of rotor winding.

In the year that followed, Nomos released a line within most of their lines called “neomatik” which added the 3001 movement as an option alongside other hand-wound calibers. Available in two color ways per watch line, kind of a classic silver as well as a peachier champagne. So, for example, there are now multiple automatic Orion and Metro options, easily distinguishable by the words “neomatik” on the dial.

This year at Basel Nomos really focused on showing that previous release to press and retailers, as the mid year launch meant many people had yet to handle them, and then introduced a new neomatik offering, in their Tetra line of watches. The Tetras are a peculiar series within Nomos line as they feature near platonic square cases around dials with designs akin to what’s on their Tangente and Tangomat watches. Striking to say the least, they always seemed a bit more positioned towards female customers with case sizes of 27.5mm and 29.5mm edge-to-edge.

For the neomatik Tetra’s, the first automatic versions of the watch, Nomos also bumped up the dimensions quite a bit, completely changing the feel of the watches. Now at 33mm, the Tetra has a quite bold feel on the wrist. Yes, 33mm… you might be thinking, “but that’s still really small” and while the number is, since it’s a square watch, it wears much much larger than it would seem. In fact, any larger and the watch would be too big.

Additionally, the dial layout has been ever so slightly changed, but in a way that has great impact. The basic “bauhaus” design is still there, but the small seconds at 6 has been changed from a square indentation to a round one. Then, likely to temper the increased size a bit, there is a numerical minute index in contrasting colors on the very edge of the dial. These, additions, though slight, soften the look of the watch overall, giving them that signature Nomos playfulness found on some of their other models.

The Tetra Neomatik will be available in two colors, Tiefblau and silver. The first is a dark, dark blue… in fact, I’d really call it more of a cool grey than blue, as it’s a very subtle shade. Punctuating the grey is a bright orange seconds hand and aqua green numerals. The silver dial also has the orange hand, a signature of the neomatik sub-line, and pale blue numerals. The palettes work really well on both, with the occasional dash of color adding some personality.

As should be pretty obvious, both are featuring the DUW 3001 automatic in-house movement and should be available this Spring for $3860 in silver $3980 in Tiefblau.