Citizen Gives Us The Tsuyosa 60 With New Movement; FC Updates The Classics Premiere; Hanhart's New Purple Preventor HD12; Isotope And Oracle Time Team; Greubel Forsey's Unbreakable QP Balancier

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Greubel Forsey is quickly becoming a personal favorite. Now, just to come up with enough money for one.

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In this issue

• Citizen Updates The Best Selling Citizen Tsuyosa 60 Automatic With New Movement And Colors

• Frederique Constant Adds Full-Steel and Blue Editions To The Classics Premiere

• Hanhart Updates Their Go-Anywhere-Do-Anything Preventor HD12 Collection With A Purple Dial

• Isotope And Oracle Time Team Up For Two Great Looking Mercury Watches With Vitreous Enamel Dials

• Greubel Forsey Introduces The Incredible QP Balancier That Solves The Perpetual Calendar’s Biggest Issue

👂What’s new

1/

Citizen Updates The Best Selling Citizen Tsuyosa 60 Automatic With New Movement And Colors

The humble Tsuyosa collection has been instrumental in the remaking of Citizen over the last couple of years. As Seiko has slowly been moving upmarket with their pricing, even on their most basic watches, Citizen slid in with a couple of incredible offerings, both in design and in price. The Tsuyosa was key here, with great looking designs and even better prices. Now, three years after its introduction, the collection is getting an update, not just with new colors, dials and bracelets, but also with a new movement inside.

On the case side, not much has changed. In fact, the shape and size remains the same, meaning that you still get the barrel shape that measures 40mm wide and 11.7mm thick. The case is still made out of steel, with a brushed finish and polished details, and the crown is still recessed at 4 o’clock. On top is a sapphire crystal with a cyclops over the date, while the caseback uses mineral glass. Water resistance remains 50 meters. There are three versions included in this new releases — an untreated steel, a bi-color one that gets a yellow gold IP-coated bezel and crown, and a fully rose gold IP-coated.

The dials get the same treatment as the small seconds version, which meaning that it has a stamped guilloché-like pattern, paired with some really great colors. The uncoated steel edition (NK0020-55E) comes with a classic black dial, the two-tone version (NK0024-54X) with a trendy green dial, and the fully rose gold-toned model (NK0023-57L) with a blue dial. I know what you’re saying, I’m saying the same thing — that rose gold color would have looked amazing with the green dial. The rest gets standard applied markers and hands, but it all looks great together.

Then, we have the new movement. Current Tsuyosa Automatic models come with the calibre 8210, which has now been replaced with the calibre 8310. It has slightly better finishing, including silver bridges and plates, an openworked rotor, blue-coloured screws and stripes on the main bridge, but the major upgrade comes in the form of the 60 hour power reserve, an improvement over the previous 40 hours. The watches come on a new bracelet, a 5-link, Jubilee-style one, with brushed external links and polished central links and a concealed butterfly clasp.

The new Citizen Tsuyosa 60 Automatic will be part of the regular collection and goes on sale in September. The new movement, stamped dial and bracelet have caused a price hike for the standard steel model. It goes from €299 from the previous version to €379 for this one. The bi color version is priced at €399, and the rose gold is priced at €429. See more on the Citizen website.

2/

Frederique Constant Adds Full-Steel and Blue Editions To The Classics Premiere

Frederique Constant’s other release at Geneva Watch Days, the update to the supremely impressive Classic Perpetual Calendar Manufacture with three new variants, kind of overshadowed what they did with their dress watch, the Classics Premiere. Joining that classic collection now are two new versions with great pastel dials and a new stainless steel bracelet.

The case of the watch remains the same across all of the Classics Premier collection. It’s a simple thing made out of stainless steel, with a fully polished finish, and measures quite right for a dress watch — 38.5mm wide, 10mm thick and with a 43.5mm lug-to-lug. On top is a domed sapphire crystal, surrounded by a thin plain bezel. Water resistance is decent at 50 meters.

But who cares about the case. It’s all about that dial. First of all, great choice of colors. There’s a salmon and a blue option. But it’s made even better with their choice of textures. The base of the dial has a rough grain to it, with a chapter ring — framed on both sides with a printed railway track — that has a circular brushed finish. Super cool. But even cooler are the applied and polished numerals that look like Breguet style, but have a bit of flair to them. These are by far my favorite version of Breguet numerals I’ve seen so far. That’s paired with polished Breguet hands and a thin central seconds hand.

Inside, you’ll find the Calibre FC-301, based on the La Joux-Perret G100. This is becoming an increasingly more popular movement that matches the dimensions of the ETA-2824 variants. It beats at 4Hz and has a very nice 68 hour power reserve. The watches come on a new five link Jubilee-style bracelet with a brushed and polished finish, closed with a push button folding buckle.

The two new Classics Premiere watches will be part of the permanent collection and will be released very soon. Price is set at €2,095. See more on the Frederique Constant website.

3/

Hanhart Updates Their Go-Anywhere-Do-Anything Preventor HD12 Collection With A Purple Dial

Hanhart has been on a bit of a roll for the past year or so. A brand best known for their watches that draw inspiration from watches made for German pilots and naval officers for decades. While recently they introduced their first diver, which I have in for review and will tell you about more next week, last year they released the Preventor HD12, their take on the go-anywhere-do-anything watch. Now, the Preventor HD12 is getting a purple dial with the Silk Purple edition.

The Preventor collection keeps the proportions right. The case measures 39mm wide, 10mm thick and has a 46mm lug-to-lug. Hanhart also points out that they use a special steel alloy they call HD12 steel. It’s supposed to as corrosion resistant as classic 316L, but much harder without being brittle. It’s then additionally hardened with a transparent PVD coat, making it five times harder than regular 316L. On top is a smooth fixed bezel, surrounding an anti-reflective sapphire crystal. The caseback and crown screw down, giving you 150 meters of water resistance.

When the collection was introduced last year, you could get the watch in black or blue. Now, it comes in a really nice shade of purple. It’s a time-only setup with large Arabic numerals, and the historic Hanhart logo at 12 o’clock. Breaking up the simple dial are the ornate cathedral hands that are large enough to be filled with lume.

Inside, a bit of a surprise. Not because you get the Sellita SW 200 movement, but rather the fact that you get the SW 200 OR the Soprod SOP P024. Granted, both of these are based on the ETA 2824-2, but from what I understand, it will be a random choice who gets which. Not something you see every day. Both beat at 4Hz and have a 38 hour power reserve. Hanhart say that they regulate the movement to 0/+8 seconds per day. The watch comes on a steel bracelet that has the same transparent PVD coat as the case for toughness, but you can’t seem to get it on the spectacular leather strap that has a removable Bund plaque. Which is a shame.

The Hanhart Preventor HD12 Silk Purple is available now, limited to 200 pieces. Price is set at €1,295. See more on the Hanhart website.

4/

Isotope And Oracle Time Team Up For Two Great Looking Mercury Watches With Vitreous Enamel Dials

Isotope has experienced a meteoric rise from a funky microbrand to a full fledged indie watchmaker with some great looking cases and even better dials. But while their collection is cool and full of interesting stuff, they make some pretty fascinating stuff in their collaborations. Their latest one happens with the British watch magazine Oracle Time, and ti comes with a duo of pretty fantastic dials. These are the new Isotope x Oracle Time Mercury Vitreous watches.

The watch is made out of stainless steel and shares a base with the regular Isotope Mercury model. That watch is inspired by the Mercury train, an aerodynamic high-speed passenger express operated by the New York Central Railroad in the mid-1930s. It’s a very interesting case that’s made out of three parts, with the bezel and horned lugs sitting on top of the middle case. The whole thing is quite compact at 38mm wide, 10mm thick and with a 44.5mm lug-to-lug. It gets a bead-blasted finish, one in a matte silver and the other in a black matte DLC coating. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Then, we have the dials. As the name suggests, the dials are executed in vitreous enamel, one in a rich orange, which comes in the black case, and another in a mint green, which comes in the silver case. Both dial seem to have the slightest of gradients, with a slight texture to them. There are no markings on the dial except for the tiny Isotope application at 12 o’clock and both have case matching hour and minute hands, with no seconds.

Inside, a familiar movement, the manual-winding Peseux 7001 calibre. It’s a super thin movement that measures just 2.5mm tall, beats at 21,600vph and has a power reserve of 42 hours. The watches come on FKM rubber straps in either black or grey to match the case.

The new Isotope x Oracle Time Mercury Vitreous go on sale on September 15th and are limited to 25 pieces each. The price is set at £2,775. See more on the Isotope website.

 5/

Greubel Forsey Introduces The Incredible QP Balancier That Solves The Perpetual Calendar’s Biggest Issue

Certainly one of my favorite meetings at Geneva Watch Days was one with Greubel Forsey. Not only do they make some pretty incredible watches — I got to handle the Hand Made 2 — but their CEO, Michel Nydegger, is one of the coolest guys in the entire watch industry. It doesn’t hurt that he’s 35 years old and has a very rock star vibe about him. He showed us some jaw dropping pieces from their past, but also their brand new watch, the Greubel Forsey QP Balancier. Oh, boy…

Starting on the outside, you get a beautiful, but very simple case, even with the monopusher built into the crown. Made out of white gold, it measures 45.1mm wide and 14.75mm thick, with a stunning combination of brushed and polished finishes. On top is a domed sapphire crystal, held down with a polished bezel, while out back is a flat caseback. You even get 30 meters of water resistance.

Then, there’s a dial, which hints at the specialness of this watch. You get central hour and minute hands with small seconds offset toward 10 o’clock. The large disc at 5 o’clock features windows for days, date and months in a line, an extremely rare thing for perpetual calendars, with a leap year indicator on the lower left and function selector on the top right. To the left of the dial is the arc of the power reserve indicator and to the left of that, intersecting with the small seconds, is the 24-hour day/night indicator. And most notably, at 9 o’clock is the 30 degree inclined balance wheel which takes up a lot of space on the dial.

But when you get to the movement, it all starts to make sense. It’s a manual winding Greubel Forsey in-house calibre, beating at 3Hz, with a 72 hour power reserve, made up of 612 parts and holding two patents. But there’s so much more to it than you can imagine. Perpetual calendars are supremely complicated movements. Not only do they have to keep track of seconds, minutes, hours, dates, days and months, in addition to stuff like years, leap years and moonphases, they have to be reasonably simple to adjust without special tools. This ends up being a delicate dance of gears and levers to make everything work, but with caveats. Adjust your perpetual calendar at the wrong time of day, when the wrong gears align, and you risk blowing the entire thing up. Tun out of power, and it’s an incredible pain to set back to the right values.

This is the exact thing that Greubel Forsey fixes with the new QP Balancier, with the development of the Mechanical Computer, a 25-part mechanical brain inside the movement which knows and follows the rules of the Gregorian calendar. That not only means that all of the functions are linked together, meaning that setting one function aligns all the others, but it also means that it can all be operated from the one crown. It also has a security system that allows you to go forward or backward in time whenever you want, other than around midnight, when the whole watch is in a state of change. On the backside you’ll see the year display.

The new Greubel Forsey QP Balancier is limited to 22 pieces and price is on request. See more on the Greubel Forsey website.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• In this piece, Joe Hagan finds himself unexpectedly aboard the Luminara, a superyacht belonging to the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. On the “mother of all influencer trips,” Hagan finds himself thrown in with a bunch of A-listers who are not holding back. The resulting report is a fascinating spectacle—but also a commentary on the vast chasm between rich and poor.

• In this essay for Noēma, James O’Sullivan reflects on how early social media brought people on the internet together—through curiosity, connection, genuine engagement, and authentic reciprocal relationships. That period is long gone, replaced by influencers and algorithms, and now AI slop. But O’Sullivan argues that the death of social media can lead to a better web—smaller and slower platforms, private spaces with real people.

• We know that Alaskan communities pay high prices at the grocery store, largely due to the cost of shipping food by road, water, and air from the lower 48. But with trade tensions simmering between the US and Canada, and the premier of British Columbia threatening to put tolls on trucks headed to the Last Frontier, Eva Holland’s investigation for High Country News discovered that among the obstacles between Alaskans and the food on their table, the threat of tolls is only the beginning.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Harry Metcalfe talking the Jaguar rebranding and the company future with Jeremy Clarkson is quite the chat. If there’s a podcast we need, it’s this one.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk