"Small" Movement Coming

Unfortunately for those of us hoping for thinner watches, it kind of looks like what's smaller is the diameter.

They have been every much overdue to release a new ladies' Cal 8520 successor, hopefully it will be a bit thinner too if Cal 8800 based, but yea an ultra-thin or at least a semi-thin really needs to be next on their list. They have been slowly improving but I feel like the 3-level co-axial escapement has somewhat hamstrung their ability to get down to really thin movements again, though I guess Cal 2500D wasn't that bad and it did have one.

Heard some rumblings about this, my gf is excited at least lol.

4.6 mm

To add: 8900 is 5.5mm thick. And in comparison, the Rolex 3130 in the no date sub is 6mm thick.

The myth that Omega's movements are really thick persists on forums, despite providing evidence that they are not over and over again...

Well if they don’t keep updating or hype stuff they lose that psychological sale. But darn I just started buying new poor time to improve I need a couple years to justify anything mentally

It's wild.

Its an impressive level of narcissism in a way. People want smaller watches, they focus on the other handful of people that want smaller watches, and conclude that Omega must be making big watches because they cant make a smaller watch. Its impossible that Omega is CHOOSING to make a big watch and these big watches are ruining their business 🙄
I would bet on tiny AT.

Sinn 456...

https://www.sinn.de/en/en-sinn/ladies-watches/456-st-i.html

My wife has one:

That aquamarine dial is quite lovely

Hmm, just a myth? In our timeframe of reference the 1120, 1861 and especially 3313 seemed wafer thin vs the 8500/8900 and 9900. It’s only a mm or 2 (and the separate 7750 dervatives were always fat I know) but Omega magnified the difference manyfold when they made the cases around them. I suspect it was a marketing lead decision to make the watches feel more substantial but it wasn’t a good direction IMO. I mean who needs a 17mm deep PO FFS. Did it need to be 4mm deeper than the 2500 version? Obviously not.

I hate disagreeing with you since I normally come off worse but I do think omega have form for fat watches recently and it can’t be denied today’s movements are thicker than those from 20-30 years ago in the main.

there is no disagreement that the 1120 was a thinner movement, but the perception that the thickness of omega's movements is what makes their watches as thick as they are when a major competitor has a thicker movement in a thinner watch is definitely an issue.

@PandaSPUR called it narcissism, it is interesting that while the 1120 powered omega's are considered thin by the Omega crowd, thinness is not considered enough to make them competitive with Rolex. There's a certain amount of goal posting that goes on when measuring what makes these watches good or bad and if they meet one metric, well, they're still not good enough because they're not meeting others. That is narcissistic tendency 101 tbh.

I think we are talking about different things. I was not comparing Omega's movements of today with Omega's movements of 20-30 years ago. I was comparing them to other brands on the market - in that context the movements (not the watches) are not really that thick.

But even if we take your interpretation, the differences are not quite as dramatic as you make out. Let's look at some numbers...

Some older movements:

1120 - 3.90 to 4.10 mm - Omega has different thicknesses listed on this one for some reason.
1128 GMT - 5.2 mm
2500 - 4.10 mm
1150 - 7.90 mm
1861 - 6.87 mm
3303/3313 - 6.85 mm

Some newer calibers:

8800 - 4.60 mm - this would be the replacement for the 1120, so at the worst .7 mm taller, and at best just .5 mm taller than the 1120
3330 - 7.90 mm - same as the 1150 series it's based on (ETA 7750)
8500/8900 - 5.50 mm
9300/9900 - 7.60mm - this has the largest difference but is still less than 1 mm thicker than the 3303/3313, and still thinner than the 1150 series.

Part of comparing movement thickness is to look at the function and the diameter. The only outlier that is present is the 8500/8900, and as a 13 ligne movement there really is no equivalent time/date only caliber that Omega had in that diameter in the time frame you stated, so making an Omega comparison there is difficult.

If you look at a sort of equivalent diameter movement to the 8900's 13 lignes, or 29.0 mm diameter, you have the slightly smaller Rolex 3135, which is 28.50 mm in diameter, but is 6.0 mm tall. So for an equivalent diameter, the Rolex movement is taller. From what I can find, the Rolex 3235 is even thicker - 29.29 mm diameter and 6.18 mm tall. So no, Omega's movements are not "really thick" as I stated when compared to other brands, but yes they are slightly thicker than they were.

You specifically mention the 1120 and 3313 - keep in mind that these are very slim movements to begin with. The 2892A2 that the 1120 is based on is a full 1mm thinner than the workhorse 2824-2, so it is already a very thin movement. In fact the 8800 and 2824-2 share the same 4.60 mm thickness, and I don't generally hear people describe the 2824-2 as being a really thick movement. The 3310/3303/3313 is based off a very thin F. Piguet chronograph, so yes the newer calibers are thicker, but these were already quite thin mass produced movements. If anything the newer Omega equivalent movements are more "normal" than "thick."

But none of this is related to the thickness of the watches as you said - they have grown thicker primarily due to reasons other than the movement's thickness. Display backs are one reason, higher domed crystals are another, and I do believe that a lot of this is a stylistic choice also. Collectors are a small minority of buyers, and although on forums you hear complaints all the time about the thickness, I'm not convinced that the non-collector buyer is all that concerned. In fact as the purchases on this forum show, many collectors are buying too, so I really do think the complaints are overblown to a large degree, even though I agree with them.

So in summary I don't disagree with you that the watches are thicker, and I don't disagree that it's not a good thing. I do disagree that Omega's movements are "a mm or 2" thicker - they are not. I don't believe that in comparison to other brands, Omega's movements are really thick.

Anyway, good discussion. Unlike some other forums I think we can have a more detailed discussion here about this topic and not just have people repeat over and over again that "co-axial movements made all the watches too thick!" as I see on other forums.