I was looking for a Bauhaus design dress watch, one that slips under a long sleeve easily, a minimalist dial that is relatively slim. I was inspired by the Junghans Max Bill but they are next to impossible to purchase in Australia and this was the time of no international travel brought about by Covid-19. I wanted a leather strap and I knew I wouldn’t wear it often so I didn’t want a high priced piece. I like the Longines dress watch range, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual has an oyster bracelet, Nomos Glashütte or Jaeger LeCoultre are what I would choose given a decent budget but this is not really possible.

So, the Tissot Everytime Swissmatic would become a possibility, the bauhaus minimalist dial appealed to me so I wandered in the store. I did not have my reading glasses with me so when the saleswoman turned it over, I couldn’t really see the movement. I could see through the sapphire case back that the rotor was pretty much unfinished, I could see the bridge was black but that was about it. So when I returned home and began researching I found out the Swissmatic movement is somewhat of an unusual engineering feat.

This is a low priced automatic watch by an entry-level Swiss watchmaker so I was expecting a high-end piece. I did enquire if this was a Powermatic 80 movement and she was unable to answer my question, this wasn’t a concern as the Everytime has a RRP of $650 AUD and I was able to purchase for $553, a decent enough discount. The crown feels a little light-duty, mine doesn’t sit square and is worse when setting the time, even during hand-winding, the crown is misaligned on the stem.

The T1094071603100 from the T-Classic range is a 40 mm 316 stainless steel case with 30 metres of water resistance with an 11.6 mm thickness. The light silver dial has index markers with no numerals and a date window at the 3 o’clock position. Whilst this is a little large for a dress watch, it fits under my shirt sleeve. I do like the bauhaus design, the simple yet elegant dial design and long horns on the case fit my 8″ wrist well, it would be too large for a 6″ wrist, maybe even a 7″ wrist. .

The black leather strap is cow leather with a standard clasp, whilst more upmarket versions have the butterfly clasp, this entry-level timepiece has the standard pin/buckle clasp. That will do for the time being, my wrist is a little large and I have the clasp set at the second hole from the end, this isn’t really ideal. The Swissmatic is a throw away automatic movement, the whole movement is built by robotics and cannot be disassembled as the plates are soldered together. The black bridges I could see were actually plastic – amazing.

The movement has a 72 hour power reserve; that, I find amazing. The movement is built using not only an automated process, the movement was redesigned to just 51 parts that have been available in the Sistem51 manufactured by Swatch. No movement servicing required, that is actually very wasteful and doesn’t really align to contemporary sustainability values. The watchmaker just replaces the entire movement at service time so I am not even sure if the watch is worth servicing – time will tell.