When one encounters a watch with a black PVD case, one would usually expect the base metal under the dark coating to be steel, or possibly titanium. But Urwerk ? which most recently had tongues wagging, and whisky palates salivating, with its development of the world’s most complicated flask ? has never been known to do the expected. Hence its headliner release at SIHH 2018: the Urwerk UR-210 Black Platinum.
The watch combines a rare black-PVD platinum case with an unconventional flyback minutes function.
A platinum watch with a black PVD coating is a true rarity in the watch world ? I can’t, offhand, recall ever seeing one previously ? which makes the Black Platinum more exclusive and luxurious than of all the UR-210 models that preceded it. The heavy weight of the watch’s unusually shaped, 53.6 mm x 43.8 mm case was an intriguing surprise when I first picked it up, and its black-with-red-highlights aesthetic is certainly eye-catching, but there are even more surprises inside the case and behind the sapphire crystal. The Black Platinum combines the revolving-satellite time display emblematic of the UR-210 collection with an unconventional flyback minutes device. The prominent, three-dimensional minutes hand acts as a high-tech cowling that encloses the hours and carries them in turn smoothly across the minutes scale. When the end of an hour is reached, the flyback function jumps into action at rapid speed ? less than a tenth of a second ? and returns the ...