MB&F Sequential EVO Chronograph - THE GREATEST CHRONOGRAPH INVENTION IN 100 YEARS!
May 31, 2022,15:34 PM
What's better than a Split Seconds Chronograph? The new MB&F Sequential EVO Chronograph! I had the distinct pleasure of seeing this watch last week in Geneva and all I can say... This is REVOLUTIONARY. An ALL NEW Chronograph Concept! A truly great contribution to Horology!
What makes this watch special?
Yes, you can see that there are two seemingly independent chronographs. But what is that button at the 9 o'clock position? Here is where the magic happens. The MB&F website describes it better than I can... "The LM Sequential EVO movement incorporates two column-wheel
chronographs and a revolutionary “Twinverter” binary switch, allowing
multiple timing modes: independent timing, split-second, sequential (lap
timer), and even a cumulative “chess match” mode – a combination never
seen before in any previous wristwatch."
The Twinverter here is magical. And this concept makes it better and more useful than any traditional split seconds chronograph. Even the Double Split! Or Triple Split!
When I saw and handled this watch last week in Geneva, I was astounded. It was true horological history in the making! I could barely contain myself. I had to wait a whole week due to the embargo on this news! I didn't mention it to a soul.
Basically it works like this; you have three timing modes:
Sequential Mode Lap Timer: Time one race horse, every time it passes a checkpoint, you press the "twinverter" button and this will display the time on the display, so you can record it on a piece of paper, chronograph continues running, you can repeat this any number of times for multiple checkpoints.
Simultaneous Mode Split Seconds: Start timing two race horses. Press the Twinverter button, both chronographs start. When Tortoise passes the line, you stop Chronograph #1. When Hare passes the line, you stop Chronograph #2.
Independent Mode: Time two completely unrelated things. For instance, the cooking time of two different meats on the grill.
Here's a short video of gorgeous people using this gorgeous-er watch:
Now, I know my readers (i.e. YOU) would rather get it from the horse's mouth than from my keyboard. So without further ado, here's the press preview they launched. You can hear Mr. Busser and Mr. McDonnell describe their creation.
This is AMAZING. It's amazing that a small independent brand and Stephen McDonnell came up with these incredible inventions. Whereas established legacy brands create only further interpretations of the classic century old split seconds chronograph. This wasn't created by Rolex, nor Vacheron Constantin, nor Breguet, nor chronograph expert Zenith, nor chronograph expert Minerva, but a tiny brand that sells only a small amount of watches a year, and has only around 30 million Swiss Francs in revenue a year... Wow... Small independent watchmaking at its finest.
It is my great pleasure to introduce this amazing timepiece to you. Now... MB&F, you really ought to loan me one of these watches so I can write a full review! Too bad, this watch will surely sell very well (some of you will be sending emails to your dealer soon) and thus they won't have an extra one to loan me!
I can only beg our WatchProSite members to share with us their impressions! As an owner of a traditional split seconds chronograph, I am SUPER IMPRESSED! Well done Mr. McDonnell and Mr. Busser! Well done the whole team at MB&F! Bravo!
What's better than a Split Seconds Chronograph? The new MB&F Sequential EVO Chronograph! I had the distinct pleasure of seeing this watch last week in Geneva and all I can say... This is REVOLUTIONARY. An ALL NEW Chronograph Concept! A truly great contrib...
And this is how it should be imho... progress. It's also kinda sad that many brands are just living off their past reputation instead of pushing the art, science, and technology forward. Let's hope we finally get an officially-announced new Modern Holy Tr...
The current "Holy Trinity" of Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet are quite amazing. The "Big Four" (not Accounting Firms) would include the aforementioned three, plus Breguet. Perhaps we need to make a "Contemporary Pious Trinity" fo...
Really needs a modern eye as many companies are superseding the craftsmanship and creativity of the old trinity today. Interesting sidebar as was on the phone with a timepiece friend today discussing the MB&F, the RR release, etc and he brought up somethi...
But overall, I found this watch to be very fairly priced. Yes, it's a chronograph priced like a perpetual calendar. But arguably it's more complex and pioneering than a perpetual calendar. It's just that perpetual calendars are perceived to be more comple...
And they're under $20K US. Soon, QPs won't be that special anymore. JLC makes a very nice thin perpetual calendar cased in steel for a reasonable $23K US.
I don't think it has a flyback. I think the "twinverter" button acts in place of that. But I don't know. Maybe I'll ask the next time I'm in their office in Geneva!
Although that doesn't make it any less amazing! I echo all of your thoughts about this watch, it is a superlative achievement and a real mechanical tour de force. I was lucky enough to have the chance to play with it and photograph it in Geneva last month...
Yes... The problem is "the average consumer" which plagues all watch companies. The average consumer wants three things; automatic, a quickset date in an aperture, and a large second hand. They don't care about hacking. They don't care about flybacks, whi...
But the companies are only going by how the consumer incentivizes their behavior. Meaning if the consumer doesn't care enough, the company doesn't care that much neither. Did I get it right this time?
This is truly an amazing feat of high end horological technology. Time to write a new chapter in the book of chronographs! Thank's for a very interesting post.
...and maybe it is only me: this "dial" is really not pretty at all. Quite messy, not legible in many ways, nothing I would like to look at and no charm for a wrist imho. Not talking about the technical features. (There also have been chronos in the past ...
I often say, some perpetual calendars aren't handsome and that they're crowded and messy dials. Some chronographs can come off that way too. But this one is quite handsome in person. Of course, to each their own. But I'm very sensitive to messy dials. And...
With that said, the design itself does leave me pondering.... As with most MB&F designs, so nothing remotely new there .... Remains to be seen in the metal. Thanks a bunch for the exhaustive report Patrick! Cheers, Filip
I wore this watch in Geneva last week, and it didn't come off nearly that thick (the crystal is heavily domed, the case side isn't that thick). The 44mm case size definitely felt small, it wore like a 42mm like an Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch. So don't wor...
Thanks to the genius of Stephen McDonnell and the creative vision of Maximilian Busser, we no longer have to put the chicken on the BBQ at the same time as the steak. It becomes possible to separately time the cooking of both to perfection, without having...
It was a wonderful moment when Max Busser explained how the idea was presented by Stephen and how the watch was born. They way Stephen explained the loss of amplitude in a traditional chronograph when accuracy and stability is “most” needed; and then went...
This and the lm perpetual make me wonder what the heck all these other brands are doing with their r&d budgets or if such innovation is even possible in a larger corporate/commercial environment. In my industry few have figured out how to nurture a contin...
Hmm. I don't know why MB&F has an aversion to second hands. I like to have the second hand too, just to make sure the watch is still running. With the MB&F watches, the movement is often exposed, so one can automatically tell the movement is still...
IMHO having a seconds hand makes it convenient to not only set the watch accurately, but also measure the accuracy on an on-going basis. Perhaps if one of the chrono seconds hand can be kept running without affecting the timekeeping stability, it may be a...
The 5960 has a vertical clutch chrono, opposed to the more traditional horizontal clutch. The horizontal clutch has gear teeth going in and out, giving a minor amount of friction that would eventually create extra drag in the system and theoretically shou...