For those who’ve wondered if there are tourbillon-regulated dive watches on the market, the simple answer is; yes! But, they are only a few of them and naming some from the top of one’s mind can be a challenge. Fear not, however, Angelus have just launched a new watch in its bold U50 collection, so the number of tourbillon dive watches currently available goes up by at least one! Here’s the Angelus U53 Tourbillon Dive Watch in a trendy Khaki green colour scheme.
Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute to think of another watch that comes with a (flying) tourbillon escapement and has a depth rating of 300 meters or more. It’s not that easy, is it? That’s because it is simply something that doesn’t naturally go well together, a robust diving instrument fitted with a delicate anti-gravity regulator. Sure, the Angelus U53 is not alone, but you’d have to have intimate knowledge of the watch market, past and present, to come up with an answer. Richard Mille has done it with the RM 025, a 300m watch with a hand-wound chronograph and a tourbillon. Blancpain has that in its collection too, with the 300m Fifty Fathoms Tourbillon 8 Days. And Panerai has done it too with the Submersible EcoPangaea Tourbillon GMT. But it seems that Angelus is sort of the specialist of this very niche concept, with already the U50 Tourbillon in its collection. In any case, the genre is not very well represented.
On to the Angelus U53, it is. For several years now, Angelus has been creating highly technical, contemporary watches featuring complex movements using all the capacities of the brand’s owner, the Citizen Watch Group. This group includes movement developer and manufacturer La Joux-Perret, which is responsible for the A-300 calibre inside this watch (more on that later).
The Angelus U53 Tourbillon is the latest evolution of the U50 dive watch series, which aims to fill a very narrow niche. The exterior uses grade 5 titanium in a robust, edgy design. A round case is topped with a saw-tooth style bezel (new to this U53 watch) and has double guarded crowns. One to wind and adjust the movement, and the other to make full use of the inner rotatable bezel, which is now coated in khaki green. Given the skeletonized construction, there’s no real dial in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, a flange on the inside of the rotatable bezel helps to tell time with luminous hour markers and a minute scale in between. Large hour and minute hands are paired with a small seconds subdial at 9 o’clock.
Powering this U53 Tourbillon Dive Watch is the in-house hand-wound A-300 calibre. As mentioned, it is made by La Joux-Perret and features a one-minute flying tourbillon. It is the same calibre as used in the U40 Racing Tourbillon Skeleton from a few years back, albeit it’s tilted slightly to accommodate the two crowns on the right-hand side of the case. It runs at a 4Hz frequency (28,800vph – quite fast for a tourbillon) and offers 60 hours of power reserve. The plates are sandblasted for a sleek finish, and the wheels have a circular-grained finish. The cage for the tourbillon has bevelled and polished edges.
The Angelus U53 Tourbillon Dive Watch is limited to 25 pieces and comes on a green, textured rubber strap with a titanium folding buckle. It comes with an additional green textile NATO strap with a titanium pin buckle. It is priced at CHF 39,400 before taxes.
For more information, please visit Angelus-Watches.com.