The Urwerk UR-210, aka Maltese Falcon, with a world’s first winding efficiency indicator.
In the upper right quadrant of the dial, the Urwerk UR-210 has a traditional power reserve indicator. In the upper left quadrant, is the brands new winding efficiency indicator. It indicates to the wearer, the winding efficiency over the last two hours.
Naturally, if you are not moving around very much the indicator will point more towards the red side and if you are moving around a lot, it will point more towards the green side. “This entirely new indication does not measure mainspring torque, but calculates the difference between the consumed and generated energy of the mainspring.”
What can you do now that you know how efficiently your watch has been automatically winding over the last two hours? You could wind the watch more if you know it is running low. You could move around more. Or, a better option, thanks to the feedback from the UR-210’s winding efficiency indicator, you could turn the watch over and fine tune its winding efficiency via a selector on the case back.
“If your UR‐210 indicates an insufficient supply of energy, you can position the winding efficiency selector (at the back of the watch) to ‘FULL.’ The rotor will then convert the slightest movement into stored energy. In this configuration, a turbine connected to the rotor provides smooth, unimpeded power. But if you are more active, then that may provide more power than required and unnecessarily wear the mechanism.
In that case, you would position the winding efficiency selector to ‘REDUCED’ to engage the rotor damping system. An air turbine compressor mounted on ruby bearings spins and creates internal resistance – enough friction to slow down or dampen the automatic winding rotor. In ‘STOP’ mode, the automatic winding system is disabled completely and the UR‐210 runs off reserve power and may require manual winding.”
The UR-210 may be the world’s first watch to offer a power reserve efficiency indicator function, but visually it is the movement of retrograde minute hand, not the power reserve efficiency indicator, that will draw the most attention. The minute hand travels a 120 degree arc over a 60-minute period, then right when the last minute is complete, in a fraction of a second (0.1), the hand flies back to dock with the next hour satellite. Awesome.
The retail price is $145,000.
