A perpetual for people who hate fuss
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ยท
Jaeger-LeCoultre spent much of the twentieth century supplying movements to other people's names and being far too modest to mention it. The Master Ultra Thin Perpetual is one of the places where the house finally takes some credit for itself, and it deserves to.
A perpetual calendar, for those who have not had one explained over a long dinner, knows the length of every month and the leap years, so in principle you do nothing until the year 2100. This one does it in a gold case 39 mm across and 9.2 mm thick, which is properly slender for the complication, with a silver dial carrying the date, day, month, moon phase and the rest in a layout that does not look cluttered, which is harder than it sounds. The calibre 868 is automatic and runs for 70 hours, visible through an open back, and it is water resistant to 50 m, a figure most watches of this kind would not dare print.
The practical caveat, and every perpetual owner learns it eventually: the calendar only keeps its promise while the watch keeps running. Let it stop for a week and you face a careful resetting session, in the correct order, with a corrector tool and probably a glass of something to steady the hand. Seventy hours helps. A winder helps more, much as it pains me to recommend one.
At thirty-six to thirty-nine thousand dollars it is a fraction of what Patek asks for a perpetual, and only a little more than a Breguet Tradition. The honest criticism is that Jaeger's secondary prices have never been strong, so if you buy one, buy it to keep. As it happens, that is the only right way to buy a perpetual calendar anyway.