12 Technical Achievements in Watchmaking from 2024

The word I keep reading to describe the watch industry in 2024 is “conservative.” There is certainly a case to be made for that view (and my colleague Bilal Khan does so quite eloquently in yesterday’s article), but there is also, I feel, ample evidence of the industry’s ongoing (and, to my mind, essential) devotion to doing new things on the technical side. In this day and age, with the watch business so diversified, so international, and so independent of one another in their schedule of releasing new products (the Spring windfall that is Watches & Wonders Geneva notwithstanding), it can be easy to overlook these innovations when you’re trying to tie up the watchmaking year in a neat bow. Of course, every watch brand has its own approach. Sometimes it’s about setting records (Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget); sometimes it's about adding elevating a brand’s repertoire to the next tier of complexity (Breitling, TAG Heuer); often, it’s just about taking a fresh approach, or adding a clever twist, to existing complications (Nomos, Swatch). For those who may have missed them or even forgotten about them, here are the technical innovations in the horological world — major and minor — that I found worthy of attention in 2024.

Ball Model M Roadmaster A

With the Roadmaster M Model A, Ball Watch introduces a mechanical alarm function to its predominantly rugged, tool-oriented lineup for the first time. But it’s not just any mechanical alarm function but an “Alarm-Matic”  system, which uses the motions of the wearer’s arm to wind the alarm along with the main movement, and also uses a ring-shaped metal gong (similar to those used in minute repeaters and other more complex chiming watches) protected by a polymer outer layer rather than a more traditional hammer-and-gong design. This bi-material construction offers improved isolation of the gong’s chimes while also eliminating stray noises and vibrations that could muffle its high-pitched ringing. The result is a much crisper and clearer emission of the sounding alarm, more like a miniature clanging school bell than the amplified, chirping cricket noise of most other alarm watches. The movement, Caliber RRM7379, even combines a GMT function with this innovative alarm system, a rarity throughout the watch world. I delve more deeply into the Model M Roadmaster A in this review. 

Breitling Premier Datora 140th Anniversary/Caliber B19

As I touched on briefly in my Breitling Year in Review roundup, one of the most significant but oddly under-reported developments for that brand in 2024 was the launch, during August’s Geneva Watch Days, of its first in-house perpetual calendar movement, the automatic, COSC-certified Caliber B19. Based on Breiting’s Caliber B01, the now-ubiquitous high-performance horological engine that the brand rolled out back in 2009, the new movement naturally includes the integrated, column-wheel-driven chronograph that has long been a fixture of its ancestor, and also adds a full calendar with a moon-phase, which automatically corrects for leap years and thus can run for nearly 100 years without a calendar adjustment. Despite all these features, Caliber B19 also offers a power reserve even sturdier than its predecessors: a full 96 hours as opposed to the already impressive 70 hours that is standard for the B01 and most of its offspring. Breitling installed Caliber B19 in three limited-edition timepieces, the smallest and most elegantly wearable being the Premier Datora 42 140th Anniversary Edition featured here, a “gentlemen’s chronograph” with a 42mm case made of 18k red gold. The movement, on display behind a sapphire caseback, even pays visual tribute to the anniversary referenced in its name, with an engraving of Breitling’s historical watchmaking factory at 3 rue de Montbrillant in la Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on the solid gold rotor. By far the most technically significant of its 140th anniversary releases, Caliber B19 puts pilot’s-watch specialist Breitling in rarefied air, as one of the very few watchmakers putting out a movement that combines a chronograph and a perpetual calendar.

Cartier Santos-Dumont Rewind

Haven’t we all wished at some point that we could make time run backwards, to give ourselves the occasional do-over? Well, Cartier hasn’t quite accomplished that feat with its Santos-Dumont Rewind, a limited edition of 200 pieces in platinum with a quirky “reversed” dial layout, but it offers a visual and technical facsimile of that sensation nonetheless. A close look at the carnelian red dial, with its applied Roman hour numerals and apple hands, reveals that the hours are arranged counterclockwise: 12 at the top, 11 where the 1 should be, 10 where the 2 should be, and so on. The hands, accordingly, move in the same direction for a quirky (and arguably very confusing) way of reading the time. When the hands are at the obligatory 10:10 position, for example, the time on the Santos-Dumont Rewind is actually 2:50. This unconventional display comes courtesy of Cartier’s manually wound Caliber 320 MC, which beats behind a solid caseback with the signature of the watch’s namesake, Alberto Santos-Dumont, engraved in both backwards and forwards script. On the one hand, it’s hard to reconcile such a classically elegant-looking watch with such an impractical feature, but on the other, isn’t it totally on theme for a watchmaker that has historically given us such wildly unconventional models as the Crash, the Coussin, and its various “Mystery Dial” models? One might even speculate that Santos-Dumont himself — who prodded his friend Louis Cartier to defy convention by making a wristwatch for men, back in the era where they were worn only by ladies — might have appreciated the audacity of it. 

Glashütte Original PanoLunarInverse

Glashüte Original gave the world its first “inverted” movement in 2008 in the original PanoInverse watch, which featured horological elements normally mounted on the back to be viewed in their full glory on the front, alongside off-center displays of the time and enhanced with a high level of hand-crafted decoration. The German brand has been releasing variations on that unconventional timepiece ever since, mostly adding only discreet complications like analog power reserves to the ensemble. This year, however, GO. literally shot for the moon, adding a beautifully executed moon-phase display to the hours-and-minutes subdial. With 3D laser-engrave moon disks rotating over a starry aventurine sky under a translucent sapphire crystal, and arranged in an eye-catching asymmetrical layout with the Panorama Date, the decorated dial-side balance bridge, and other elements, this moon-phase subdial lies at the center of a radiating guilloché pattern. Limited to 200 pieces in platinum, the PanoLunarInverse is the most complex yet in the PanoInverse family; more details on it can be found here. 

Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre Heliotourbillon Perpetual

Jaeger-LeCoultre once again proves its “Watchmaker of Watchmakers” bonafides with the Duomètre Heliotourbillon Perpetual, whose signature innovation — a dynamic, world-first triple-axis tourbillon that spins like a top in an aperture on the left side of the case — wowed all comers at Watches & Wonders. This visually arresting device, however, is only one of an array of technical marvels incorporated into the watch’s new in-house movement, Caliber 388. The “Duomètre” in the name refers to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s patented mechanism, introduced in 2007, that uses two separate barrels and gear trains, linked to a single regulator, to independently power the timekeeping and the additional complications, thus ensuring accuracy and less of a drain on the power supply. The “Heliotourbillon” is the aforementioned device, rotating on a cylindrical hairspring on three axes with three titanium cages, all mounted on ceramic ball bearings to reduce friction. The first cage is set at a 90-degree angle to the balance wheel; the second, at 90 degrees to the first, both make a full rotation in 30 seconds; and the third, perpendicular to the second, makes a full rotation in 60 seconds. “Perpetual,” of course, denotes the perpetual calendar mechanism, which includes a Grade Date display, a super-accurate moon-phase, and a patented leap-year indication in red. In another world-first achievement for the maison, it’s the first perpetual calendar in which the hour and minute can be set backwards or forwards without doing damage to the synchrony of the calendar settings. Jaeger-LeCoultre packs all of this micromechanical wizardry into a 44mm rose-gold case; as you’d expect, its rarity and exclusivity is baked into the production run: just 20 pieces will be made.

MB&F LM Sequential EVO Flyback

MB&F copped an “Aiguille d’Or” award from the GPHG in 2022 with its LM Sequential EVO, the first-ever chronograph watch from the iconoclastic brand founded by Max Busser (the “MB”) and brought to life by his “Friends” (the “F”). The key “friend” involved in the Sequential EVO is Northern Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnell, who conceived the original model as the first chronograph wristwatch with two separate sets of chronograph totalizers, operated by two sets of pushers, but also with an additional fifth pusher that can control both simultaneously, meaning the user can time two separate events and compare their elapsed durations. For an everyday example, you could use this functionality to record how much time you’re devoting to each of two projects you’re working on at the same time; in a sports context, you could set one stopwatch to time an entire workout session at the gym while stopping and starting the other to track how much time you spend at each exercise station. Impressive as this accomplishment was, McDonnell had always wanted to include an additional flyback functionality to the Sequential EVO, and working the bugs out of it took an additional two years. Hence the 2024 release of the LM Sequential EVO Flyback, which adds an option of pressing a single button once (rather than a sequence of two or three pushes) to instantly send the chronograph hands instantly back to zero for an even more user-friendly design. The watch, limited to a scant 33 pieces, all in platinum cases with openworked dials and lacquered, domed subdials, also introduces a patented system with jewelled rollers to ensure the smooth operation of the flyback. With MB&F marking 20 years in 2025, it’s intriguing to think about what the brand might do for an encore. 

H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Tourbillon Skeleton

H. Moser & Cie.brings its minimalist aesthetic into a different technical arena with the Streamliner Tourbillon Skeleton, a dynamically stripped-down version of its Streamliner model first introduced in 2020, and featuring as its centerpiece the brand’s floating, corkscrew-like tourbillon. In this instance, “minimalist” translates to mechanical transparency: to create the new, skeletonized Caliber HMC 814, Moser has carved away all the material it deems “unnecessary” to create what it dubs “a manifesto for ingenuity.” In addition to the view of the tourbillon at 6 o’clock, which appears to hover weightlessly over the movement, behind the Globolight-treated hands, the barrel has been hollowed out for a clear view of the mainspring, allowing the wearer to get a glimpse of how much of the three-day power reserve remains in the barrel. The rotor has also been stripped down to its essential structure, while another brand-signature element, the double hairspring developed by Moser’s sister company Precision Engineering AG, can be viewed behind the tourbillon cage. The latter element helps to minimize the effects of gravity and friction on the movement, enhancing timekeeping accuracy. Bilal had the opportunity for a hands-on session with the Moser Streamliner Tourbillon Skeleton earlier this year, and shares his impressions and original photos here. 

Nomos Tangente 2Date

Germany’s Nomos is a watchmaker known for its adherence to Bauhaus minimalism in its watch designs and for taking, for the most part, a practical approach when it comes to complications. With the Tangente 2Date, however, which it released in the fall, Nomos makes a rare foray into creative impracticality, and somehow, in my opinion, it works. The watch, the latest member of Nomos’ flagship, 1930s-inspired Tangente family, contains a new manual-winding movement, Caliber DUW 4601, which powers a unique “dual date” display — one via a standard numeral disk in a window at 6 o’clock, the other by way of Nomos’s own peripheral system. In the latter, a 1-to-31 date scale encircles the main dial while a moving disk with a small colored section fills in the apertures around each numeral to identify the date. For the Tangente 2Date, which I explore in more detail here, Nomos has even pulled out all the stops to make the movement special, applying the “sunbeam” decorative motif that it has used previously only on the movements of its gold-cased limited editions. 

Panerai Submersible ELUX LAB-ID

From the original Radiomir to the more modern Luminor substances, Panerai has a long history of coming up with clever solutions to illuminate watch dials and it unveiled its most avant-garde invention in that area yet with the Submersible Elux LAB-ID back in June. “Elux,” patented by Panerai in 1966, is an abbreviation of the Italian term “elettroluminescenza” (electro-luminescence); the original version of it was composed of a series of radiation-free luminous panels — in various sizes, shapes, and materials, whose glow was maintained by an electric field — and used primarily in military applications, like signage on ship decks to guide helicopter landings. For this LAB-ID version of its military-heritage Submersible watch, Panerai developed a new movement, Caliber 9010/EL, with a microgenerator that converts mechanical energy from the wearer’s arm into electricity that powers the 160 LEDs on the dial for a bright green glow in the dark. Could this technology one day be standard on Panerai watches? I go deeper into the Elux technology, and the watch, here.

Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon

As history-minded watch aficionados know, Piaget has a long history of making ultra-thin watches, starting with the revolutionary Caliber 9P in 1957 and continuing to set records in the category, all the way up to 2018 with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept, the world’s thinnest wristwatch at the time. For its 150th anniversary in 2024, Piaget went all-out in challenging the frontiers of horological slimness with its latest record-breaker, the Piaget Ultimate Concept Tourbillon, which somehow manages to incorporate a flying tourbillon cage into a waiflike 2mm-thick case. At the moment, it is the world’s thinnest tourbillon watch (ball’s back in your court, Bulgari). How Piaget accomplished this feat is a three-year R&D journey that’s too complex to detail here, but essentially its watchmakers had to redesign the 2018 watch (which had no tourbillon) almost from the ground up. Like its predecessor, the new watch basically saves space by using the caseback as the movement mainplate and setting the crown flush into the caseband to be operated by a stylus. The case material is blue-PVD-treated cobalt, which offers the best thinness to hardness ratio. The tourbillon, made chiefly of titanium, is designed so it is anchored in place by its own perimeter via ceramic ball bearings; ball bearings also replace pivots in the mainspring system, reducing friction while still managing a power reserve of 40 hours when fully wound. The entire 45mm case is only about as thick as a coin, and, according to Piaget, “made to be worn.”

Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch Mission to Earthphase

Swatch — the brand, not the group — has forced its way back onto the radar of serious watch-industry observers in recent years by virtue of its high-profile collaborations with luxury brands Omega and Blancpain. And part of that renewed interest derives from its forays into modern-age materials as well as crowd-pleasing designs. Nevertheless, few were likely expecting Swatch to introduce anything all that interesting on the complications side in 2024, which is exactly what the brand did with its latest co-branded take on Omega’s MoonWatch, the Mission to Earthphase. As my colleague Erin Wilborn delves into here, the watch, outfitted in the now-familiar “bioceramic” case, features on its Speedmaster-inspired dial not only a moon-phase but also — as its rather clunky name reveals — an “Earth Phase.” What is an “Earth Phase?” Well, just like a moon-phase display tracks what the moon looks like from the Earth on a given day, an Earth Phase offers a view of the Earth if the wearer was observing it from the moon. Located in a subdial at 10 o’clock, the eponymous display has a rocky lunar-surface motif in its lower half and a realistic Earth disk that rotates behind and above it, its “oceans” treated with UV paint for a nighttime glow. It’s a not altogether utilitarian function but a unique one, and very on-theme for a watch based on a model famously worn by astronauts. And at an MSRP of $325, it’s easily the most affordable watch on this list.

TAG Heuer Monaco Split Seconds

TAG Heuer does a lot of things right, especially in many of its more recent product launches, but it has not in recent years been a watch brand that has pushed the limits of horological complication. However, its show-stopping Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph, introduced at Watches & Wonders Geneva, proved to be one of the technical highlights of the show, and of the year. The model commemorates 55 years since the launch of the original Monaco in 1969, and features an all-new movement, Caliber TH81-00, developed jointly by TAG Heuer and Vaucher, which boasts the rare and exotic split-seconds function (aka a “rattrapante”), enabling the wearer to measure two concurrent timing events independently. For the first time, the Monaco, named for a famous Grand Prix race and famously worn by racing drivers of the 1970s, is capable of timing multiple laps on a racetrack in quick succession. The avant-garde elements don’t end with the mechanism: the famous square case is made of lightweight titanium, framing a sapphire dial that affords a view of the movement from the front, whose blued, arching bridges have a gradient surface achieved through an anodizing process. In another first for the brand, the entire caseback is made from sapphire for an unobstructed view of the complex movement — the first, TAG Heuer says, in a renewed commitment to exploring high complications in future special editions.

There are, of course, other major feats of horological creativity on display in this year’s crop of new watches. Several didn’t make the cut for this list only because their signature innovations debuted in previous years — i.e., Ulysse Nardin’s newest take on the Freak S, A. Lange & Söhne’s striking Honeygold Lumen edition of its Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon, and Christopher Ward’s “Act II” version of its groundbreaking chiming watch, the Bel Canto. A handful of other very worthy notables are covered in detail in other end-of-year lists, including the GPHG Aiguille d’Or award-winning IWC Portuguiser Eternal Calendar, my Money is No Object Watch of 2024; Bovet’s astounding Recital 28 Prowess 1, as my Travel Watch of 2024; and Patek Philippe’s controversial yet indisputably technically impressive Cubitus Instantaneous Grande Date, Day and Moon Phases Ref. 5822P-001 in the top spot as my Watch of the Year. Hopefully you’ll check those out as well, and hopefully the watch industry will continue to provide great choices for lists like this one in the coming year.