The Brilliantly Designed Moser Perpetual Calendar

Every now and then, someone comes along and make less more - such is the case with the Moser Perpetual Calendar.

The design of the timepiece was by Andreas Strehler and what a stroke of brilliance. Traditional Perpetual Calendars have all the sub-dials but what Andreas Strehler did was to present the essentials in the front and move the "non-essentials" to the back.

At a glance, one might mistake the Perpetual Calendar for a classic timepiece with a large date but on closer inspection, you see that little arrow sticking out - what you might ask is that for?

There are 12 markers on the dial. What better way to use the markers to represent the 12 months in the year - and the little arrow points to the month of the year! When the marker points to the 4 o'clock position, it's April. Doing away with the traditional sub-dials also made the dial a lot cleaner and legible.

Keeping the essentials means that with one peek, all the information is there - time, date, month and power reserve. The leap year indication was moved to the rear and what a move - who needs to know which cycle is currently on. I definitely don't so this was a feature I was happy to have seen relegated to the back.

The other very useful feature of the Moser Perpetual Calendar is the "Flash Calendar" which allows the owner to adjust the time in either direction, forward or backward via the crown without fear of upsetting the movement.

What's more, the date window displays a large date. And unlike traditional perpetual calendars, one uses the pushers to advance the indicators on the subdial. With the Moser Perpetual, the crown is all that is needed to adjust the date and month.

The manual winding movement HMC341 (changed to HMC800 in the new Endeavour line) is an integrated perpetual calendar movement. Where most QPs use a modular approach i.e. using a perpetual module built on a base calibre, the Moser is a fully integrated perpeual calendar movement.

The attention to details are fantastic - from the movement engraving to the interchangeable escapement module, the HMC341 is finished to a pretty high standard.

Nicely handcrafted logo

The interchangeable escapement module (below) found in the HMC341 movement. The interchageable escapement allows the faster servicing of the watch - instead of taking apart the escapement, the service personnel need only swap out the module for a fully regulated and adjusted new module.

There is so much that goes into the design of the Moser Perpetual Calendar. With the double barrel, the timepiece comes with an impressive 7 days of power reserve.

Located at the 9 o'clock position, the indicator gives a discrete view of the power reserve.

This model comes with a black lacquer dial, 42mm rose gold case, rose gold folding clasp and black croc leather strap. We have heard many names given to this piece but I still say that this is the easiest and most sophisticated Perpetual Calendar on the market.