The young, up-and-coming Swiss manufacturer presents its second model, an annual calendar with digital hour display, which aims to impress not only visually: Berneron has gone to great lengths to improve readability, operation and robustness.
Sylvain Berneron founded his own brand in 2022. He previously worked as a designer at BMW, Porsche, Richemont and, most recently, as chief designer at Breitling. His debut, the completely asymmetrical Berneron Mirage, whose shape follows the manufacture calibre, caused a sensation among collectors and resulted in waiting lists until 2027.
The new Quantième Annuel is his first watch with a complication. The annual calendar recognises months with 30 and 31 days and only needs to be corrected once a year, at the beginning of March, when it displays 29 February or, in leap years, 30 February. During the two-year development process, the focus was clearly on the wearer’s needs. Berneron therefore paid particular attention to optimal readability, ease of use and high security.
The watch is read in a cross shape: the time from top to bottom (hours, minutes, seconds) and the calendar information intuitively from left to right (day of the week, date, month). The large jumping hour in the window makes it particularly easy to read. The day of the week and month are also generously sized and, for reasons of symmetry, are displayed in the same size. This requires a large disc for the 12 months, which is why the discs overlap under the dial. Only at second glance one realises that the date display is retrograde: this means that it never covers the small seconds and the round window for the AM/PM display.
To keep operation as simple and intuitive as possible, Berneron has developed a concept with two correction pushers. The crown functions as usual on watches: in the first pulled position, the date can be corrected; in the second pulled position, the hours and minutes can be corrected. The two correction pushers can be operated without tools and are responsible for the display closest to them: the left one for the days of the week, the right one for the months.
Berneron also designed the mechanism so that it cannot be damaged by incorrect operation. Even incorrect settings are prevented. For example, if you press the month corrector on 30 March, the calendar does not jump to the non-existent 31 April, as many other annual calendars do, but to 1 April.
The Calibre 595 was developed in collaboration with a Swiss mechanical specialist and is decorated and assembled entirely in the company’s own workshops near Neuchâtel. The hand-wound movement has a double barrel and a long 100-hour power reserve. Nevertheless, providing sufficient power for the jumping displays was one of the biggest challenges in the design.
This is because the four jumping displays for the hour, day of the week, month and AM/PM, as well as the retrograde date display, all require a lot of power and jump simultaneously at the end of the month. To ensure that the watch does not stop and continues to run accurately, Berneron designed a small power reserve for each display, which fills continuously in the period until the next jump and is then discharged all at once to advance the discs. The movement consists of a total of 476 parts. The free-sprung balance spring causes the balance wheel with eccentric regulating weights to oscillate at 21,600 vibrations per hour.
However, the calibre not only has a lot to offer technically, it is also visually impressive. An important feature of Berneron, which was already evident in the first model, is that the plate and bridges are made of gold. Unlike the Berneron Mirage, the movement of the Quantième Annuel has a symmetrical design: at the top, a skeletonised bridge holds the balance wheel, in the middle you can see the three winding wheels with the clutch, and at the bottom you can see the barrel.
The striking decoration on the gold bridges, which looks like particularly deep Geneva stripes, has been guilloché. The lower surfaces have a gratinated structure thanks to nuagage. The balance bridge has been hand-ground and polished black. And, of course, the edges of the bridges have been bevelled and polished.
The case has a discreet size with a diameter of 38 millimetres. With a height of ten millimetres, Berneron has succeeded in creating a beautifully flat case despite the complicated movement. This is all the more astonishing given that the case itself has a complex structure: on the one hand, there is an officers case back with a spring-loaded cover that is opened using the push-button in the crown.
Secondly, Berneron protects the platinum case with six thin steel parts: the bezel, the crown push-button and four steel shields on the lugs, which are screwed in from below, are made of hard, high-quality 904L steel alloy. This protects the sensitive platinum case from scratches over a large area, and the steel parts can be easily and inexpensively replaced if they do get scratched.
The new model is available in two different dial colours: opaline silver and black. The prices also follow a unique principle: to thank early buyers, the Quantième Annuel will cost less in its first year of delivery in 2026: 120,000 Swiss francs (excluding taxes). In 2027, the price will rise to 130,000 and in 2028 to 140,000 francs.
