The most hyped watch of 2023

That might be the ugliest bezel of 2023. Invicta could do something I guess, but other than that...

While I truly enjoy your YouTube channel, I can’t agree with you on this watch.

I understand that a watch is more than the spec sheet. The price point is simply too high for me to consider this watch for what it is. The watch market is competitive. If IWC wants to be in the 12k neighborhood, it has to be equal to the other houses on the street. This just isn’t. I love the ETA 2892 movement, possibly much more than the average watch enthusiast. I have made watch purchases because the movement was a 2892 base. Both my Ball watches fit into this category. But even paying full list from Ball I was well under 3k with an exhibition case back.

What IWC is asking is the equivalent of my Ball RoadMaster with the same base movement, AND one of the Omega two tone Seamaster Diver 300M’s in my collection, PLUS another couple of thousand dollars. Ummmm, no. Even if the finishing is as good as Grand Seiko, this is an $8k watch max list. The dial is interesting. But is it better than my Seamasters? No, I don’t think so. If I give them equivalence, which I think is reasonable and fair, this watch is a comparable to a steel Seamaster Diver 300 M. That is what I’d be shopping it against if I was in the market, and that’s at $5900 on the bracelet.

On the bright side, if one is inclined to buy one, I suspect these will be available at steep discounts eventually as preowned or grey market because this price point isn’t sustainable against the other offerings in the current watch market.

I really like the look of the Ingenieur surprisingly enough. It's definitely out of my range but IWC has done a great job bringing it back.

Another well put together, enjoyable video.

I’m onto you @Max! You blew out your voice at Taylor Swift’s Seattle concert this week didn’t you? 😜

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/27/entertainment/taylor-swift-seismic-activity/index.html

Thanks Oliver 😊

It's not cheap, and the people are not happy 😅

Haha, you sure it wasn't the Barbie movie? 🤣

I don’t believe the watch is a bad product. I think it is probably a very nice watch. But against the broader market, IWC has an especially tough sell as an argument on this one. If I compare it to a GS SBGH311 at $6.6k list, how do I spend near double for the IWC? Again against a GS comp (because GS is so renowned for their finishing), I offer the SLGA019. Dial detail taste is purely subjective, and individual by definition. But that dial is stunning, and at least equal (and I would give the GS an advantage on this). For a list of $10.4k, that dial has the spring drive on top of better MSRP. It might seem like I’m dumping on IWC here. I’m not trying to. But this watch just can’t be worth near $12k in comparison to the broader market offerings.

I think the finishing, design, and movement are phenomenal (even if people completely about the movement, it’s a 5 day power reserve with Cosc specs which is incredible!). My only qualm is with the price 🙁$12K is a lot of money. I’m obviously not the target demographic as IWC is marketing this towards people that have that kind fun money laying around.

I doubt I'll ever buy this watch, but I appreciated the complete package 😊👍

It is a gorgeous watch, there is no doubt. None of the Genta designs appeal to me at all, but I respect them for what they are. I had one of those Ingenieur chronographs (7750 based) from the 2010 period which had the bomb quick change link and instant adjust clasp systems. I sent it away along with the IWC Fliegeruhr (also 7750 based) because I didn't bond with either of them. I had planned to get an IWC Da Vinci but it hasn't happened, yet.

Hi Max,

I am older than a lot of members so I have to be honest that the price here in Canada is elevated but would not be an impediment for ownership, while I had some initial interest remain on the outside of the Genta fan club, it is just how I view the design, his designs. I was convinced by a Swiss fella way back in the late 1980s to at least consider the AP Royal Oak perpetual calendar Moonphase when I was shopping for one, he was 100%, it was the superior watch from AP over a boring dress watch iteration but in the end I sold it to a gemologist who sold the AP to a guy that I know who still owns it today. The IWC is massively overpriced here in Canada but probably a discount is negotiable. Around the same time IWC was publicizing the Ingenieur, I noticed a Baume & Mercier perpetual calendar watch to be fitted into their Riviera model which is an integrated design from the mid 1970s certainly been around but my ad feels that none will arrive into Canada. I have asked him to source a grey dial B&M Moonphase instead only to discover there is only 1 left in Canada seems like enthusiasts think alike because after the grey version was launched already a few years ago, there was zero interest.

Watch Crunch is great I am sure that the app gives you joy! You can accept the accolades, they are well earned.

Best,

J

Thanks for the stories! Yes I think at 8-10k, this watch would get them a lot of fans

Great vid - production value keeps going up 💪

A loud bar and a few too many drinks is my guess on your froggy FM dj voice? 🤔

Beautiful, but like almost everyone else, I think it’s overpriced. I mentally have IWC watches pegged at about 1/2 that price. Being yet another Genta watch isn’t strong enough incentive, they are a dime a dozen suddenly. And not like this is full ceramic or has a tourbillon to justify the price.

Maybe if they constrain supply and there is some market based organic demand for it? Otherwise it’ll be sitting at a lot of dealers I suspect, as nice as it is.

BTW Who is the new tattoo arm in the vids? I guess tattoo arm is more edgy for wrist pics, I see lots of brands going that way for advertising 😉

Me looking at IWC pricing at my mother's basement:

My gripe isn’t with the ETA base of the movement but with the pricing of the watch. IWC priced this watch so high just cause why not. They’re trying to target the typical Rolex buyer who’s a wannabe Nautilus or Royal Oak buyer by claiming “hey we have practically the same watch designed by the same guy and we’ve priced it $20k less”.

I’ll modify @Max’s summary a bit to say: if you’re in the market for an integrated bracelet steel sports watch and you consider the Royal Oak or Nautilus as your dream watch, then this is a good intermediate until you can actually afford them.

The harsh truth here is that the Ingenieur will always be in the shadow of the Royal Oak and the Nautilus and it’s priced a bit too high for such an intermediate step to those.

You got me with the C6 reference! I'll probably never let go of my Z06. I'm still not 100% sold on this watch. I'm drawn to the Titanium model .Why wouldn't I just pick up a pre-owned Zenith Defy Titanium for less $? Why did Zenith stop making that watch on Titanium? Who loaned you the watches? IWC?

My Z06 sadly my only manual exchange vehicle right now

Meh 😑. I would happily own a Spitfire or Mark XX but integrated bracelets aren’t my thing . Good breakdown though thanks Max .

You are probably not wrong.

The watch has 120h of power reserve as a combination of a huge barrel and a super tiny balance wheel. Like most less expensive movements it uses an Etachron regulator index which is less stable (in theory) than regulation by adjusting inertia.

The low regulating power with the basic regulating mechanism likely means that it's tricky to regulate because it a small change has a great effect. And it also means they likely won't have a very stable accuracy on the wrist because a small change has a large effect in a watch that has low regulating power. They know that there's no way around the physics and stating no guarantee regarding the accuracy is just in line with all the other budget choices made with that movement.

That's a great insight into the physics of the movement design. I didn't even realize there might be a downside to these new watches with astonishing power reserves. 🤯

Exept for the dial, the watch seems...bland. The price doesnt help.

There absolutely is a downside and may very well have something to do with why brands guaranteeing standards beyond COSC (e.g. Omega and Rolex) don't do 5 day power reserve watches. In fact, if you look at the movements from back when they were competing at the observatory trials they went out of their way to make the balance as big as possible and especially with automatics that seems much more sensible than the other way around in favour of power reserve. The Zenith 135 is an example of such a watch with a chronometry focused architecture.

The "problem" is that consumers understand power reserve as it has a unit equivalent to that of time. That's simple and simple is king in this day and age. Energy, power and inertia, especially when coupled with angular motion and things like resonance, not so much... people probably still hate sin, cos and tan from back in high school 😉 brands have to do what sells, not what makes sense. Rolex probably didn't want to compromise on the performance you'd get at full wind and just increased the mainspring at the cost of having to replace the entire barrel just to have that 3 day reserve. The performance on day 3 will most certainly not be as on day 1 though, not even the crown gets around Hooke's law.

From a purely technical point there is really nothing special about these long power reserves. The IW32111 I believe has 6.3 mg cm^2 of inertia, the ETA 2824 has 15 mg cm^2 or roughly 2.4 times as much. The scaling is linear so with that little balance it would run for pretty much 100h+ with the energy stored in the main spring, assuming equal transmission efficiency... some attempts at better performance metrics were made but pretty much nobody cares and so I have given up 🍻

I was (until just now) definitely in the "more power reserve == more good" crowd. I'm not planning to become a watchmaker, but @UnsignedCrown are there any books about the physics of watches? I care more about a mechanical watches' accuracy than brand or style (there are many watches I love the appearance of, but won't buy for the very reasons above, even if I could get them for half the retail price).

That strap is fire

I believe the SJX series of articles used this book as a foundation. However, Huygens invented the pendulum clock and Hooke can be credited for the balance spring. Pretty much in the form used today. Those dudes studied pendulums and springs.

As such, the underlying physics of a mechanical time keeper is fundamentally that of a harmonic oscillator. Both the pendulum and the torsion spring form one subject to certain approximations. Most notably friction is ignored but also the small angle approximation used for the pendulum as well as Hooke's classical law are approximations. They are quite good in many instances (that's why watches work) but not perfect. I'd start with that and then work my way up to putting them inside a watch, after all that's how it actually happened 😉

Understanding the influence of external factors and manufacturing errors on the (instantaneous) rate is hard. I'm pretty sure they don't learn the theory for that in watchmaking school, that's graduate level math as it starts getting into parameter stability of (differential) operators, the more you differentiate the more of an effect does a small perturbance have and velocity is a time-derivative of position, but this is well beyond the scope of a comment on a watch forum 😬 suffice to say, there is a reason, physical and mathematical, as to why this chart from the SJX article shows better behaviour for a 4Hz movement than it does for a 3Hz movement just like there is a reason for bigger springs and balance wheels 🍻

Cool, was just now checking out the SJX site you referenced and signed up for the newsletter,🍻!

Thanks! That one was a custom from Delugs with a limited availability alligator color.

Nice watch and build for sure. But this is the least interesting of the integrated watches he designed amongst Patek, AP and IWC.

I was fortunate enough to get to try all but the titanium version on multiple times at an IWC event in June. While I am still not certain it's worth quite that price, it's definitely worth much more than say a Mark XX, which is not knocking that watch. I also had direct comparison with the Mark XX at that time. IWC spent a lot of effort agonizing over the details on this watch and I think they did a great job. Quite a few of them were mentioned in the video. It really is the little things that make the whole so great. It is absolutely phenomenal on wrist and supremely comfortable. One of them coincidentally was sized exactly for my wrist, so this isn't a guess based on a very loose bracelet. My favorite was the aqua variant. I normally am not a proponent of polished center links, but they did not stand out as "too blingy" in this instance.

Yeah, it's a watch you gotta see in person 👍