A remontoir with a job to do
By Marco Bellini, Zurich ·
Verdict first: this is the most honest complication Lange makes.
Jumping digital hours and minutes need power in bursts. Every minute a disc moves, and at the top of the hour three move together, and in a normal gear train you would see that load as a drop in amplitude. So Lange put a constant-force remontoir between the barrel and the escapement, rearmed once a minute, and the balance gets the same push whatever the display is doing. It isn't there to impress anyone. Without it the watch would not run well.
Fake complexity irritates me. This is the opposite of fake.
The 2022 version with the L043.6 fixed the old weakness. The first Zeitwerk ran 36 hours, which on a hand-wound watch was too little. Now it's 72, and there's a pusher to advance the hours when you cross a time zone. The bridge is engraved and bevelled the usual Lange way. Excellent.
Against it: 41.5 mm by 12.2 mm of gold wears big and tall for something filed under dress. 30 m. And 102,000 to 108,000 USD. I would still buy this before any tourbillon at the price, because here the mechanism has a reason to exist.