Industrial design isn’t something that comes into the watch industry too often. The idea of refining a horological archetype to its barest essentials rubs a lot of ‘creative’ watch designers the wrong way. But it’s also the reason Unimatic are so damn cool. The Italian brand specialising in short-run limited editions has made their name with their painfully cool, less-is-more approach (check out their awesome divers) and their latest, the Modello Quattro U4-BLB, doubles down on that idea.
The Modello Quattro is already stripped back in the extreme. A chunkily proportioned field watch, it’s designed to be a daily wearer for the clumsiest of wrists, though normally in a combination of black, white and steel. This version strips out even that minor variation in colour with an all-black look in brushed DLC. It’s sleek, stealthy and tactical, wrapped up in a 40mm case and an unnecessary (for a field watch) but welcome 300m water resistance.
So far nothing we’ve not seen before. The big change here though is the dial. Again, it’s a less-is more approach, stripping out even numerals in favour of simple, slim lines. The problem with those lines is that this is meant to be a kind of night mission watch and lines that thin can’t normally hold much lume.
Unimatic solved the issue by opting for a classic sandwich dial. Instead of painted lume, it’s a two-layer dial with slots cut into the top layer to let the layer of lume underneath shine through. This makes the indexes orders of magnitude brighter and adds some serious visual depth to things.
Inside is the ever-reliable Seiko NH35A that’s a mainstay of smaller, accessible brands. You should know the specs by now: 41-hour power reserve, 3hz frequency and hacking seconds. It also has a date, which is placed at 6 o’clock for symmetry’s sake.
As ever, the Modello Quattro U4-BLB isn’t a revolution but an evolution. It’s one step in Unimatic’s industrial design mission of distilling a watch to its most fundamental form, making slight improvements release by release. But let’s be honest, it’s also just a very cool, very accessible and very, very Italian watch. Plus as a non-limited edition at €625 (approx. £550), what’s not to love?
And as a side note, if you’re interested to find out more about Unimatic’s approach to design, we recently interviewed co-founder Giovanni Moro for our November edition. If you’re interested in that (and you very much should be) don’t forget to subscribe to the print edition of Oracle Time here.
Price and Specs:
More details at Unimatic.
