This article was originally published in the January/February 2022 Issue of the WatchTime print magazine. 

In 2018, Nomos Glashütte equipped its classic Tangente with an intelligent date display called ?update.? We tested the new midnight blue model to find out whether the in-house date indicator is just an update or a genuine upgrade.

In the past, the Nomos Tangente Datum was a handwound watch with a date display in a window at 6 below the seconds subdial. If you wanted to adjust the date, you had to turn the hands forward, orbit after orbit, until the correct date appeared in the window. This was tiresome, even if you knew the trick of only moving the hands forward from about 9 p.m. to midnight and then back again. That model, which is no longer manufactured, was replaced in 2018 by a watch equipped with then-new in-house hand-wound Caliber DUW 4101. The date display is still positioned at the 6, but now it?s larger and can be adjusted both forward and backward by using the crown.
Also in 2018, Nomos presented the Tangente Neomatik 41 Update, which is now followed by an even more elegant version with a dark blue dial. The new model also features Nomos?s patented date indicator, but in a completely different design variation ? there is no date window, or more accurately, 31 of them. One pair of these little windows flanks the current date on an unobtrusive scale along the edge of the dial. The date disk below the face of the Tangente Neomatik 41 Update ...