Nomos Glashütte has given its Metro line an ice-blue dial, but the colour is the easy part of this release to describe and the least important. The real change in the Metro Date Power Reserve Ice Blue, reference 1121, is a new movement — the hand-wound DUW 4701 — and with it a quickset date that this particular Metro has never had. The watch is USD 4,500 and comes out next to a second ice-blue model, a Metro neomatik 41 Update, that carries its own, smaller upgrade.
A new hand-wound caliber
The DUW 4701 is a fresh Nomos manufacture movement rather than a revision badge on an old one. It is hand-wound, 2.8 millimetres thick, and holds a 52-hour power reserve, which is read off the tri-colour indicator on the dial that shifts from white toward teal as the mainspring runs down. The headline functional gain is the date: it is now quickset, so the wearer can correct it directly rather than advancing the hands around the clock through midnight to move the date on by a day. For a watch whose whole proposition is a date and a power-reserve display on one dial, a date that was awkward to set was a real limitation, and the DUW 4701 removes it.
The dial does the rest
The case is the familiar Metro: 37 millimetres of polished steel, a sapphire crystal, water resistance to 5 atmospheres. The dial is where the ice blue lives — electroplated and then lacquered so the finish reads as metallic rather than flat paint — with the power-reserve indicator between one and two o'clock, small seconds at six and the date window at the bottom edge. Nomos has kept the Metro's signature off-centre, slightly austere layout and let the colour and the finish carry the warmth. It ships on a black Horween shell cordovan strap.
A neomatik companion
The second watch in the launch is the Metro neomatik 41 Update, reference 1166, also in ice blue. It is the larger, automatic Metro — 41 millimetres, 9.1 millimetres thick — and its update is smaller in scope than the Date Power Reserve's: a refresh to the same ice-blue treatment rather than a new caliber. The two together make the point that the ice-blue dial is a Metro-wide colour story for the season, but it is the hand-wound 1121, with the DUW 4701, that is the watch worth singling out.
Price
The Metro Date Power Reserve Ice Blue is USD 4,500, in line with where the hand-wound, date-and-power-reserve Metro has sat, with the money this time buying a new in-house caliber rather than a new dial over an old movement. That distinction — a genuinely new hand-wound movement at the price of a dial variant — is the reason this release matters more than its colour suggests.
Sources: Nomos Glashütte and Monochrome Watches.
