Oris sets the new standard with Calibre 400, an anti-magnetic automatic movement with a five-day power reserve and a 10-year warranty, created by Oris for today’s world citizen
The new standard
Oris Calibre 400 is a new automatic movement with a five-day power reserve, high levels of anti-magnetism, 10-year recommended service intervals and a 10-year warranty
What should a mechanical watch movement do? How could it do it better? And for more people? How can we produce the best possible watch at the best possible price?
Oris has been asking these questions for generations, since the company was founded in 1904. Today, we’re proud to announce a new in-house automatic movement that celebrates the joy of mechanics. It’s called Calibre 400.
Calibre 400 is an entirely new movement, independently conceived by Oris, and sets the new standard for automatic mechanical movements. It has a five-day power reserve (120 hours), is highly resistant to magnetism, and comes with 10-year recommended service intervals and a 10-year warranty.
Moreover, because it’s an Oris calibre, every detail has been scrutinised to ensure the highest possible quality at the best possible price. That has always been the Oris movement creation philosophy.
Oris Calibre 400 was conceived five years ago. The ambition, which was born years before, was to produce not just a highly accurate automatic movement, but one that would serve today’s world citizen.
Modern life is more demanding of a mechanical watch than it was. We’re now surrounded by magnetic fields that can have an adverse effect on a watch movement – magnets are in computers, phone cases, air bags… and because of advances in manufacturing, it’s expected that a mechanical watch will perform better and for longer than ever before.
The ambition was to produce a highly accurate movement for today’s world citizen
Many of us now own more than one watch. Sometimes we might wear a smartwatch. Perhaps we’ll go days when we don’t wear a watch at all. We also expect a luxury watch to last, partly because it’s a considered purchase, but also because we’re more conscious of the impact our choices have on our planet. A contemporary calibre should accommodate the way we live and the world we live in.
Having agreed on the philosophy behind the movement, we then faced the challenge of delivering it. ‘The challenge creating a mechanical movement from scratch is not just to come up with a list of functions and then devise a solution to them,’ says Beat Fischli, Oris’s Chief Operating Officer, who created Calibre 400 with his team. ‘The real challenge is to produce a movement that will perform consistently and reliably for as long as the intervals you’re going to recommend between servicing.’
Beat and his team engineered the movement from the ground up. ‘The solution was to develop a highly efficient movement that would be much more resistant to wear and tear,’ says Beat. ‘We focused on reducing torque in the mainspring – where power is stored – to help conserve power and put less pressure on moving parts. We also introduced a new wheel design into the gear train that delivers far greater efficiency. Calibre 400 retains 85 per cent of the energy transferred from the mainspring, compared to a norm of around 70 per cent.
‘We also knew from experience that most of the problems in automatic movements come from the way they’re wound,’ he continues.
‘Typically, the rotating mass, or rotor, sits on a ball bearing and winds in both directions. Instead, we devised a much more reliable system based on the slide bearing concept that only winds in one direction. It’s much less complex and reduces wear and tear.’
“Oris makes watches for people in love with watches, not the privileged few”
That rotor feeds mainsprings in twin barrels that store Calibre 400’s huge five-day power reserve. ‘Power reserves have improved in modern mechanical watchmaking,’ says Beat. ‘Three days has become normal – but we wanted to do better.’
Beat and his team also developed an entirely new escapement. They selected silicon for the anchor and escape wheel, and other nonferrous materials for the axes that hold the balance wheel, escape wheel and anchor in place. Around a further 30 parts are made of non-ferrous materials or non-magnetic alloys so that the impact of magnetic fields on the accuracy of Calibre 400 is reduced by more than 90 per cent compared to standard Swiss Made mechanical movements (see page 7).
‘Calibre 400 is the new standard; the Oris standard,’ says Rolf Studer, Oris’s Co-CEO. ‘It’s an intelligent concept, it has a smart choice of materials that gives it its antimagnetic properties, and the engineering solutions deliver the reliability that mean we can offer a 10-year warranty and 10-year service intervals. There’s nothing else like it.’
Being an Oris concept, Calibre 400 is made by Oris using a network of Switzerland’s finest suppliers who deliver extremely high quality using state-of-the-art industrial techniques. Calibre 400 is an Oris movement for today’s world citizen.
‘This is the Oris way of doing things,’ says Rolf. ‘We think a bit harder and come up with sober solutions that mean we can make a watch for people in love with watches, and not only for the privileged few. Calibre 400 isn’t just another mechanical watch movement – it’s a movement that gives answers to the questions of our time. More than that, it serves our customers.
Calibre 400
Oris Calibre 400 sets the new standard in mechanical watchmaking. Conceived entirely in-house by the independent Swiss watch company’s skilled engineers, it has a five-day power reserve, high levels of antimagnetism, and comes with a 10-year warranty and 10-year recommended service intervals. Here’s how it works.
Twin barrel concept
FIVE-DAY POWER RESERVE
When conceptualising Calibre 400, Oris’s engineers recognised that these days we may not wear the same watch every day. If you put a standard mechanical watch down for a day or two, it will stop as the power reserve runs down. Calibre 400 has a five-day power reserve, so it’ll still be running if you’ve not worn your watch between, say, Thursday and Tuesday. It delivers this longer period of use via twin barrels, both of which house an extended mainspring, each long enough to store two-and-a-half days of power
Class-leading reliability
10-YEAR WARRANTY AND RECOMMENDED SERVICE INTERVALS
Oris is so confident in the performance of the advanced technologies integrated into Calibre 400 that we are offering a 10-year warranty on all Oris watches powered by the new movement when you register them at MyOris. In addition, Oris is also proposing 10-year recommended service intervals on Calibre 400 watches. This means that barring accidental damage or water resistance checks, you shouldn’t need to bring in a Calibre 400 watch for a service until 2030 at the earliest. This is the new standard.
Invention at its core
A MORE STABLE ROTOR SYSTEM
One of Oris’s fundamental ambitions with Calibre 400 was to eliminate problems before they occur. Oris’s engineers identified that one of the most frequent issues with automatic mechanical movements concerns the ball-bearing system that allows the free-spinning oscillating weight (or rotor) to rotate. This is a critical element of an automatic watch – as the rotor spins, it generates power that’s stored in the mainspring, which is housed in the barrel. So we removed the ball bearing altogether and replaced it with a low-friction slide bearing system, in which a metal stud runs through a lubricated sleeve. This is much less complex, highly efficient, and involves far less wear and tear, making it less prone to breakdowns.
Highly anti-magnetic
ELEVATED RESISTANCE TO MAGNETIC FIELDS
Most Swiss watch movements will be magnetised if exposed to the strong magnetic forces we encounter in daily life. When this happens, they become less accurate, and can stop altogether. To make it highly antimagnetic, Oris engineered Calibre 400 using more than 30 non-ferrous and anti-magnetic components, including a silicon escape wheel and a silicon anchor. In testing by the renowned Laboratoire Dubois, Calibre 400 deviated by less than 10 seconds a day after exposure to 2,250 gauss. For context, the latest version of the ISO 764 standard for anti-magnetic watches requires that to qualify as anti-magnetic, a watch must be accurate to within 30 seconds a day after exposure to 200 gauss. Calibre 400 recorded one third of the deviation allowed after exposure to more than 11 times the force permitted, making it a highly anti-magnetic movement.
The Oris guarantee
Oris’s engineers developed Calibre 400 to meet the demands of today’s watch wearer. It makes three key performance promises
A 10-year warranty
A modern luxury watch should be reliable. Any Oris watch carrying Calibre 400 is guaranteed for 10 years when you register it at MyOris.
Five-day power reserve
For many reasons, you may not wear a mechanical watch every day. Calibre 400 has a five-day power reserve so it’s ready to go when you are.
Anti-magnetic
Calibre 400 has more than 30 anti-magnetic components and exceeds the norms required by the ISO 764 enhanced anti-magnetic standard.
Power play
The first watch to carry Oris’s gamechanging automatic movement is the Oris Aquis Date Calibre 400. Robust, stylish and high-tech, it’s a force to be reckoned with
Oris’s current collection is full of high-performance, fit-for-purpose mechanical watches. But when it came to choosing which model should carry our groundbreaking new Calibre 400, there was only one candidate. The Oris Aquis Date.
Around the world, the Aquis is recognised as an icon of contemporary diver’s watch design. Strong, reliable, versatile and equipped with a long list of functions, it is chosen by men and women from all walks of life who love watches.
The new Aquis Date, powered by Calibre 400, has a number of differences to the standard model. The first clue to what lies beneath are the words ‘5 days’ written on the gradient blue dial. The date window is also larger and the date disc is black, rather than white. On the reverse, the sapphire case back is the largest we’ve ever installed in an Aquis Date, so the view into the movement is as open as it can be.
At the same time, the watch is still water-resistant to 30 bar (300 metres), has a uni-directional rotating bezel with a scratchproof ceramic insert for safely timing dives, and SuperLumiNova® hands and indicies.
It’s also equipped with Oris’s newest patented development, the Quick Strap Change system, engineered so a bracelet or strap can be released simply by lifting a flap. No tools required. No jeweller required.
In short, the Oris Aquis Date Calibre 400 sets the new standard in diver’s watches.
Aquis Date Calibre 400
Oris’s latest diver’s watch is powered by Calibre 400, which has a five-day power reserve, high levels of anti-magnetism, and a full 10-year warranty
In detail
Case Multi-piece stainless steel case, unidirectional rotating bezel with ceramic insert
Size 43.50 mm (1.713 inches)
Dial Gradient blue
Luminous material Hands and indices with Super-LumiNova®
Top glass Sapphire, domed on both sides, anti-reflective coating inside
Case back Stainless steel, screwed, see through sapphire glass
Operating devices Stainless steel screw-in security crown with crown protection
Bracelet Black rubber strap or stainless steel metal bracelet, both with security folding clasp with extension and Quick Strap Change
Water resistance 30 bar (300 m)
Movement
Number Oris Calibre 400
Functions Centre hands for hours, minutes and seconds, date window at 6 o’clock, date corrector, fine timing device and stop-second
Accuracy -3/+5 seconds a day (within COSC tolerances)
Extra features Highly anti-magnetic
Winding Automatic
Power reserve 120 hours
Warranty* Extended to 10 years with MyOris sign-up. Applies to watch and movement. 10-year recommended service intervals
*Extended warranties Oris offers extended five-year warranties on all Oris watches with Oris Calibres 110-115 when owners register with MyOris. In addition, we offer an extended three-year warranty on all Oris watches with Sellita movements when owners register with MyOris.