Hands-On: Ming’s New 37.02 ‘Minimalist’ Does Something Potentially Groundbreaking – Can You See What It Is?
Time for a quiz. The image above shows you something that Ming things you’ve never seen before in the history of watches. It’s subtle, almost hard to believe, but it should be relatively easy to spot all the same. What’s the innovation? If you need a hint, look at the hands. Leave a guess down in the comments. Don’t cheat, though. If you need a hint, look at the photo below.
Still don’t see it? Let me turn up the lights. Take a look at the next picture, and you should be able to start to understand the innovation. This is the Ming 37.02 “Minimalist,” a name that makes sense for a simple Sellita-powered automatic stainless steel watch with hours and minutes. But the hidden trick is in the sapphire dial. In fact, the only way you’d be able to tell is the blue-emitting Super-LumiNova X1 hands. The sapphire dial indices are liquid-filled with Ming’s proprietary luminous material “Polar White,” which the brand says is one of the very few (if not the only) luminous material to truly glow white instead of being tinted. Yes, white-emitting lume.
Ming Thein has been chasing white-emission luminous material for a long time and telegraphed this exploration on the brand’s blog last year. He told me he approached suppliers for years, arguing that it should be possible since the wavelength for white light is just all other colors combined equally. But apparently, suppliers were unable (or unwilling) to meet the demand. So Ming sourced what they needed to pursue this project on their own, and that alone is quite cool.
The watch is otherwise relatively simple, an evolution or philosophical successor to the 17.01 and 27.01 models, both of which – like the new 37.02 – are distillations of the brand’s design language and what they think the core of what they think a watch should be. The watch has the brand’s flared lugs, a mix of brushing and polishing, and a balanced 38mm diameter by 11mm thick stainless steel case with 100m of water resistance. It’s a “a Ming” in the purest and best sense of the phrase.
The watch is powered by a “Sellita for Ming” SW300.M1 automatic movement with 45 hours of power reserve. It features anthracite skeletonized bridges and a customized rotor, which is a bit of a step up from the basic Sellita movement in so many other watches. But this isn’t one of Ming’s releases where the movement is the point (though they do plenty of those).
There’s one other milestone worth mentioning here. This is the first watch to be designed, engineered, and managed internally by Horologer Ming SA, Ming’s new Swiss entity. The project began nearly two years ago and came from a push for innovation and a hope to provide better value whilst allowing more control over the supply chain and achieving better lead times. This watch will be available to ship immediately as well and is not a limited edition.
When I first saw the 37.02 Minimalist, the surprise was unfortunately already ruined for me, so my brain was ready for what I was looking at. But I got to see the watch with a few other journalists at Geneva Watch Days and it was fun to watch their mental gears turn to figure out what was “wrong” with the picture below. And in that way, the biggest selling point of the 37.02 Minimalist might also be the biggest issue. I don’t think our brains are conditioned to be receptive to a change like this – at least not yet.
I can’t think of another purely white-emitting luminous material on the market. How we perceive color is based on how light interacts with a surface, and the surrounding environment also impacts that surface. That’s why you sometimes get weird color casts on case metal or glass, even if you’ve perfectly color-corrected your image. Using blue-emitting Super-LumiNova X1 was necessary to prove that the rest of the lume is white-emitting, but in practice, it can lead to a bit of purple-ish hue for the Polar White material. But it’s possible our brains just don’t want to perceive white as lume.
I wore the watch in a room with blackout curtains and even though I knew I had charged the lume and that I could barely see an inch from my face, my brain still was convinced that I was seeing a watch with white printing illuminated by some external source. I knew otherwise, but my brain refused to acknowledge it.
I don’t mean to say that the watch is bad. The price is solid as an entry-level – a bit expensive for an SW-300 movement, but they’ve put extra effort into the skeletonization and finishing. The rest of the watch fits the brand’s design ethos. But there’s a bit of weird psychology about how we have been conditioned to see light and dark, and this watch turns that on its head. And it may not work for some people on that psychological level, but it at least works as both a watch and a watch where the luminous material helps you tell the time in the dark, which is the point.
I appreciate Ming’s innovation here, which feels very much like innovation for its own sake. More than that, I’m interested to see how they put it into practice in other watches in the future. A watch like their 20.01 with its wild dial construction and pattern would have been interesting to see with the new Polar White lume. I’m sure we’ll see that come soon.
Beyond the new lume, however, this is also a solid entry to the brand and one that will have long legs as the company continues to innovate and grow. Whether you like a minimalist design or the things the brand is known for (like the way the dials play with light and invert so interestingly), this is a watch worth thinking about. And luckily, unlike a lot of their watches, you’ve got some time to mull it over before pulling the trigger.
Ming 37.02 “Minimalist;” 38mm diameter by 11mm thick stainless steel case, with 100m water resistance. Sapphire dial liquid filled with Ming’s proprietary Polar White lume, hands with Super-LumiNova X1, hours, and minutes. Sellita for Ming SW300.M1 automatic movement and 45 hours of power reserve. Anthracite skeletonized bridges and customized rotor; Domed sapphire crystal front and rear, with double-sided antireflective coating. 20mm MING FKM black rubber with tuck buckle system. Price: CHF 3,250. Available now on Ming.watch.
Hodinkee