IWC Portugieser 7 Day IW5007 02 42mm Rose Gold Small Seconds Watch Review

Hi, this is Tim of The 1916 Company. Welcome and thanks for logging on. If you love this watch, email me. Tim also at the1916company.com for purchase pricing and availability questions concerning this watch. Today, we discussed the IWC Portuguese 7A. This is the reference 500702. So there have been several generations of this watch dating back to the original 5000 in the year 2000. That debuted the automatic winding seven-day movement and the watch I've got right here was a quantum leap for the Portuguese Automatic 42 when it arrived in 2015, because this served as the delivery vehicle for the new 52000 series twin barrel version of the seven-day movement. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The Portugieser Automatic 42 seven-day is a 42.3 millimeter watch. That's 14.4 millimeters thick, 50 millimeters from lug to lug, and it's got a spacing between the lugs of 22 millimeters. It's a large watch, although I would opine that big is the look, so it doesn't need to be strictly proportional. I think this fits fine on my wrist, which is 16 centimeters circumference. You get a better sense of it the further away we are, and you can see on my wrist, it actually fits quite well. So if your wrist is my size or larger, you're good to go to wear the 42 version of this watch. Remember, it's a Portugieser and they've been big since the beginning. The original launched in 1939. The reference 325 was a wrist watch purpose built to fit a pocket watch caliber. At a time when the Portuguese importers of IWC, Rodriguez and Teixeira, I believe were the names of the gentlemen, they wanted a wrist watch as accurate as a pocket watch. Back then, bigger movements meant more accuracy. The only way to get what they wanted was to purpose build a large dress watch movement around a pocket watch caliber. And thus the original purpose built oversized wrist watch was born. It wasn't a pilot's watch. It wasn't a officer's watch. It wasn't a conversion of a pocket watch. It was something designed to be a dress watch of enormous proportions and dimensions. And that's what we still have here. You can see the buckle, Probus Skeffusia, a little medallion with the IWC logo. Remember IWC made in German speaking shop house in Switzerland in the Northeast of the country. We have vertical satination. We have longitudinal satination. We have some media blast. We have polished elements open up the clasp. We have some more media blast and yep, there it is. The home city of IWC, which it shares with Moser. German Swiss watchmaking, far less common than French Swiss watchmaking. In profile, I've always found it fascinating that the Portuguese and the Patek Philippe 96, they were born in the same era and the same philosophy. So much of the design of the two watches is in common, blended lugs, form follows function, integrated into the case band, conventional round cases at a time when that was not universal with wristwatches, leaf style hands, a simple small second display, vertically oriented, no-nonsense Arabic numerals with indices. They have a lot in common until you get to the size. And the Portugieser, if you are speaking German or the Portuguese, if you say it in English, is a huge watch. Even to this day, it's big for a dress watch. But unlike some of the monsters of the 2000s, which seemed like there were flashes in the pan, the Portuguese has proved it has the style and the substance to go the distance. How much so? Well, keep in mind that before the jubilee of IWC in 1993, only about 600 Portuguese of all descriptions had been made since 1939. So, despite being something rarely offered and infrequently made, it was so iconic that for the anniversary year, IWC saw fit to bring it back as a permanent offering. And so, from the 1930s, almost to the 90s, the design was never common, but iconic enough that it also endured. And you can see why it's handsome. Here we have an ardoise dial, so a gray metallic sunburst, somewhere between gray and black. That's what that ardoise or anthracite is. Rose gold indices, outboard of rose gold numerals, rose gold hands, leaf style. We have twin sunken registers with an azurage concentric pattern internally. Seven-day power reserve, courtesy of automatic winding and two mainspring barrels, so you can wind it automatically with the automatic finger winder. It's a lot cheaper than going out and buying a watch winder. And you can see right here that it actually moves quite quick as you wind it, but it is automatic winding. Peloton winding system, more on that in a moment. You can see we've got a quick set for the date and we've got a hacking seconds function that stops the seconds hand, allowing you to synchronize to a reference time. Turning it all over, now you can see that 52,000 series calibers. The 52010 is one of the largest automatic movements in the world. There's a little bit of a sticker adhesive residue on the back, forgive that. It's all protected down to 30 meters. The movement is 38.2 millimeters in diameter, meaning it is considerably larger than a standard Datejust. Here's your twin barrels. They're underneath a now skeletonized rotor and beneath a skeletonized barrel bridge. The problem with this movement when it originally debuted as a single barrel was that the one barrel gave you seven days of power reserve, but IWC never imagined that people would wire these giant watches all the time. So the idea was that you'd maybe wear it on the weekend, it would get wound up on the weekend and then it would slowly unwind and lose time over the week. So it would gain a lot of time on the weekend, lose time when it's not being worn during the week and that would all even out. The problem, even the big pilots watches were being worn seven days a week. And so the watches were always operating in a fully wound state, which caused them to race ahead and gain a lot of time. So the ultimate solution launched on the 52,000 series version of this movement for 2015 was twin barrels with phased main springs. And so that solved the problem. Another change on these is that the beat rate, which started as 2.5 Hertz back in 2000, is now a modern 4 Hertz, so 28,800 vibrations per hour. It's a movement that's five position adjusted. So that's high horology and chronometer style and it's free sprung, which means it takes a precise regulation via changes to the variable inertia screws on the balance. Then it uses an overcoil hairspring. So in pretty much any position, gravity is going to have the same effect on timing, very little that is. Now, as you can see, there's your five position adjustment. Another change that came with the move to the twin barrel for the 52,000 series, the 31 jewel movement has full ceramic Albert Peloton pawl-based winding. So with ceramic pawls and pawl wheel, no lubrication is necessary. There is effectively no wear. And most importantly, it doesn't create dirt on the movement, which is one of the few shortcomings of the original Peloton system that has been cured through the use of ceramic technology. The finishing is mechanical, but attractive and worthwhile. My favorites are the solarization on the barrel caps and the ratchet wheels. You can see you've got a little media blasted and polished solid gold medallion for this seven day automatic winding masterpiece. If you love this watch, reach out to Team Osso at the1916company.com for purchase and pricing details, all in lush red gold.