Just when you thought watches associated with F1 teams were getting stale and predictable, here comes H. Moser with a release that I definitely did not have on my bingo card. There are actually two releases here, both introduced last week as part of the brand’s partnership with the Alpine Motorsports F1 team. Both part of the Streamliner family, one is a skeletonized chronograph (which is cool, but not exactly the most exotic thing in the indie watch world) and the other is…a smart watch. Yes, a Streamliner smart watch from the brand that started their recent rise to prominence by, basically, trolling the most popular wearable ever created.
The loose concept here is that this pair of watches consists of a “Drivers Edition” Streamliner as well as a corresponding “Mechanics Edition.” We’ll start with the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition, a “measuring instrument” designed specifically for an F1 team and the highly specialized work they do to support their drivers. The watch does a nice job of evoking what we’ve come to know as the Moser aesthetic, with a blue lacquer dial for the time at 12:00, surrounded by black when the watch is on standby mode (Moser of course loves a deep and dark black). But that black negative space is actually a screen, and when digital functions are activated the watch effectively transforms into something we simply aren’t used to seeing from high end independent brands.
The Mechanics Edition is powered by a movement made by Sequent, a Swiss smartwatch brand we’ve been covering on Worn & Wound for a few years now. Sequent takes an unusual approach to smartwatch design, focusing on analog layouts and minimal applications. That’s exemplified in this Moser design, which prioritizes time telling and is only recognizable as a smart watch when woken up. Among its features are an integrated GMT with country selector, a split-seconds chronograph, a perpetual calendar, and something they call “F1 Mode” which promises to keep track of upcoming races, as well as providing countdowns to those races as well as messaging features.
The Sequent movement has a power reserve of 12 months for time indications when the watch is in standby mode, with the digital functions obviously drawing more power as they are used (power lasts for six Grand Prix, according to the brand). Moser states that the movement works in concert with both iOS and Android smartphones, and connects via Bluetooth.
For now, the only way to own the Mechanics Edition (assuming you’re not on the Alpine F1 team) is to purchase it as part of a set with the Drivers Edition (or separately if you’re an owner of last year’s Streamliner Tourbillon made in collaboration with Alpine). This is a little closer to what we expect from Moser, but still manages upend certain expectations. This is the first time that this chronograph caliber by Agenhor has been skeletonized, resulting in an uncommon view of the winding rotor from the dial side. Other aspects of the movement’s visual design have been inspired by racing in some way: the caliber’s central bridge is shaped like a driver’s helmet, for example, and two other bridges have are V-shaped, which is meant to evoke the suspension of an F1 car.
The cases for both watches are stainless steel (the Drivers Edition has a blue PVD coating) and nearly identical in size (42.3mm for the Drivers Edition, 42.6mm for the Mechanics Edition). They will be sold together in a limited edition set of 200 examples for a retail price of $ 70,000. A total of 500 Mechanics Edition pieces will be produced, with the additional 300 being made available to owners of the previous Moser x Alpine collaboration. H. Moser
