Maurice Lacroix has a deserved reputation as a maker of mechanical watches. And yet one of its latest models, the Pontos S chronograph, takes an unexpected tack: its quartz movement is Swiss but it’s also solar-powered, a first for the collection. Solar means a battery change only every 10 years, and five months autonomous running at full solar charge. The solar power also illuminates the two colour Superluminova display.
'A lot of companies choose to stay focused on where their know how is strongest - in mechanical watches, with quartz seen as an entry level product before you progress to a mechanical watch,' says Samuel Guelat, Maurice Lacroix’s international marketing manager. 'But the fact is solar is so efficient now there’s no worries in presenting it as a reliable timepiece. Undoubtedly there’s appeal to a timepiece you don’t have to worry about for a decade, and especially to younger people who appreciate the ecological angle in that too. It’s not a new tech [for watches], but there’s definitely a trend for solar again now.'
Frederique Constant, for example, has recently released its Classics Moneta Solarmetre, the first reference from the maker to be equipped with a solar movement, specifically the FC-120 solar-powered calibre from La Joux-Perret. That this specialist company was acquired by LVMH Watches last year perhaps hints at further investment in solar-powered watches to come. Like Maurice Lacroix’s watch, the Moneta addresses the two obstacles that have, for some decades, been off-putting to some consumers considering solar-powered watches: insufficient slimness in form and darkness of dial.
Solar-powered watches, though much slimmer than there were a decade ago, tend to be on the chunkier side - the Seiko Astron GPS is, as 12.4mm, the slimmest to date, with Seiko launching a limited edition in crystal green earlier this year. And, as Seiko’s head of marketing Faye Lovenbury says, 'making the tech even more ‘invisible’ is an important area of development too.' Patterned, smoked - as with the Pontos - and engraved or grained translucent dials - as with the Moneta - are now more commonplace. They appear solid but allow the light to pass through.
If solar-powered watches wore their technology a little too much on their sleeve, increasingly it’s hidden away. This year Tag Heuer expanded its solar line-up with solar versions of its Aquaracer and Formula 1 pastel models, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them.
'For a long time it’s been the case that the dial needed holes, or couldn’t be too dark, but the watch industry has worked around this - look at the latest solar-powered watches and there’s no way you can tell,' says Guelat. 'In the future you can imagine that it will develop other ways of taking in the sunlight that perhaps doesn’t involve the dial at all. Certainly I expect to see fewer purely quartz watches and more solar-powered ones.'
Tissot is one such company already exploring others means - last year its PR100 Solar unveiled a ground-breaking ‘Lightmaster’ tech that fits the light-harvesting photovoltaic panel not below the dial, as is standard, but packs it into the sapphire crystal itself, allowing light to be more easily collected. Even artificial light will do - an idea pioneered by Citizen with its proprietary Eco-Drive solar tech, 50 years ago this year.
'As solar energy becomes increasingly recognised as reliable and sustainable, it’s naturally strengthening the appeal of solar watches. But this new tech represents a significant step forward because it opens up a much wider range of finishing possibilities and greatly expands our design potential,' argues Tissot’s CEO Sylvain Dolla. 'We’re now actively working on a number of developments in this space. I think recent innovations improving both performance and design is giving a momentum that’s positioning solar watches as modern, relevant and increasingly desirable.'
The next challenge may be to up the power, to make solar suitable for watches with several complications, suggests Lovenbury. 'It’s about balancing efficiency and integration - continually improving the energy harvested from light to power increasingly complex watch functions, while maintaining attractive design,' she says.