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What is the ultimate first world problem? I can think of a handful. There’s the classic notion that we just have too much content to scroll through, stream, and consume. As the Boss put it, there’s 57 channels and nothin’ on. As I sit here typing up this article on hot early summer day with my AC blasting, I’m realizing it’s getting cold enough in here that I might need to add a layer. Woe is me! Just a few weeks ago, I bought a new iPhone and quickly found that Apple Music hadn’t automatically moved over all of my locally downloaded tunes during the initial data transfer. I was pretty disappointed when I realized only the second half of Turn on the Bright Lights was available to me on a late night drive home over the weekend. I just want to hear “Obstacle 1”!
These are all annoyances, for sure. But none of them truly compare to the King of First World Problems, which is very obviously not being able to keep your perpetual calendar sufficiently wound. I mean, have you tried to reset one of these things recently? It can be really frustrating. Plenty of brands, like IWC earlier this year, have made moves to make their perpetual calendar movements more forgiving when resetting. Gone are the days, hopefully, when jumping past the current year means an expensive trip back to the manufacture in Switzerland.
Vacheron Constantin has a slightly different solution, which is to enable your perpetual calendar to remain wound for weeks at a time by allowing the wearer of the watch to change the beat rate with the push of a button. The new Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar, announced this week, is a follow up to the first watch with the same name which originally appeared in 2019. Now with some subtle refinements, it remains a great example of how high end Swiss watchmakers sometimes take elaborate and complicated steps to solve problems that only exist for a tiny fragment of the population.
The conceit, if not the mechanics, of the Twin Beat is relatively simple. The watch has a movement that is capable of operating at two beat rates. In its normal mode, it operates at 5 Hz, and has a four day power reserve when fully wound. This is the mode that Vacheron figures owners will use during normal wear (it’s a normal beat rate). But when it comes time to put your Twin Beat away, even if it’s for days or weeks, by pushing a button on the side of the case you can change the movement to “standby,” activating a separate balance wheel that oscillates at 1.2 Hz. That equates to a power reserve of 70 days, during which time all of the perpetual calendar functions will continue to update at midnight as normal.
Vacheron is able to achieve this through the use of two separate gear trains and a series of differentials that effectively pair them together, showing a single display for all timekeeping and calendar operations. I think what’s most impressive about the movement beyond what it actually does is that it is able to do it in a size that allows the watch to remain at least somewhat wearable. The Twin Beat is 42mm in diameter and a little over 12mm thick (in platinum). Not bad for a watch that will work for over two months on a single wind.
The updates to the original are mostly pretty minor. There’s more transparency on the dial side, which allows for a better look at the mechanism as well as a cleaner more modern feel overall. The layout is fairly intuitive, with sapphire wheels for the date and month in the dial’s lower hemisphere, and a leap year indicator sandwiched between. A power reserve indicator with scales for both running modes gets prominent billing at 12:00, and there’s also a helpful indicator that gives you a readout of which mode you’re operating in at 9:00. The single functional update to this new edition is an extension of the power reserve in standby mode – the first Twin Beat ran for a mere 65 days.
It should come as no surprise that the Traditionelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar is listed as “price on request,” which is yet another type of first world problem, I suppose. This watch is not a limited edition, but one can imagine they will be at least somewhat limited in production. More information can be found at the Vacheron Constantin website here.
