Horage has opened up an interesting new path for real chronometric precision that adapts to the wearer’s environment and wrist movements. It may sound surprising, but the way someone wearing his wristwatch moves will have a major impact on the watch’s timing precision; the measurements made by certifying laboratories such as the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC), however impressive, may well not apply when the watch is worn. Any certification has to follow reproduceable procedures, so the COSC certification, which is awarded to movements that have passed a series of lab tests based on ISO procedures, is not a full predictor of the wearer’s satisfaction with the performance of their watch in real life. Needless to say, if the components of your watch movement were not machined with a sufficient quality, it would never have achieved any chronometer certification in the first place.

However, Horage is trying to make the life of watchmakers easier and their clients happier by facilitating the fine adjustment needed to make the movement regulate precisely. That is the whole concept of its newly launched MicroReg system, which is promoted with the “Quest to Zero” tagline — the zero referring, of course, to the zero-second daily deviation of absolutely precise time.

Tech over Tradition

Visiting Horage at its headquarters in Biel, Switzerland, one finds that it is unlike any other watch manufacture in terms of its employment of high technology with a layout that can be easily scaled up if needed. Andreas Felsl, who co-founded Horage with his wife, Tzuyu Huang, explains his manufacturing philosophy with an angle that is more in line with high tech than traditional watchmaking. Everything is organized and planned around an efficient work process to assemble and regulate movements, which have been conceived for an industrialized production. The R&D is just next to the assembly line to ensure that feedback is immediately traced back, and this is in alignment with a philosophy of continuous improvement that’s been successfully applied in the automotive industry.

Andreas, or Andi as he is more often known, and Tzuyu have already developed a small yet remarkable collection of movements. Developed from scratch, it took six years for their first movement, the K1, to be fully mastered and launched in 2015.

One interesting statement made by Andi during my recent visit to Horage’s premises in Biel is that “nothing can be more precise and replicable than a silicon hairspring.” Hardcore watch aficionados chuckle when you tell them that the future of mechanical watchmaking is silicon, because it takes away all of the magic of old-school watchmaking where a specialized watchmaker would spend hours perfecting the curve or the attaching points of a hairspring. But the fact is that replicability is key to quality when you produce more than a handful of movements a year. Besides, silicon is light, amagnetic and durable. Furthermore, the patent on silicon hairsprings — previously held by a consortium formed by The Swatch Group, Rolex and Patek Philippe — is no longer in force, so anyone can harness that formidable technology.

One could also add that Omega has launched last year an interesting enhancement of the silicon hairspring technology with the Spirate, allowing for a fine rate adjustment. (See Wei Koh’s story on the Omega Spirate system here.)

Horage’s Quest to Zero

Horage is now a few steps further and has developed two additional movements, the K2 with a micro-rotor and the K-TOU with a manually wound flying tourbillon. All three calibers are regulated for COSC certification (meaning a deviation of -4/+6 seconds a day) and hence, they are already fine examples of chronometric precision, which is one of the key values of the relatively young brand. The next logical move for Horage then was to make sure that the precision that is lab-certified gets on the wearer’s wrist. After all, chronometric precision is tested by the COSC via ISO procedures that prescribe a very limited number of wrist positions — in fact, only five of them.

The concept of Horage’s new system, the MicroReg, is to allow for fine adjustment of the movement once the watch has reached the client’s wrist. Why? Because adjusting a movement to certain standards in different positions at different temperatures is one thing when everything is done under constant constraints, whereas real life is about constantly changing constraints. Just think of the many times a day you shake hands or move your arm in different positions. Once that certified movement is cased, the values can slightly change and they will even differ compared to the ones registered in the testing laboratory at COSC or elsewhere.

Those who argue that testing the watch head and not “only” the movement is already another hurdle have a point, because you need to avoid losing the movement’s precision once it’s being cased. That is what the Observatoire Chronométrique by Timelab in Geneva, the Besançon Observatory in France or Glashütte Observatory in Germany do following the same ISO procedure 3159, which is in fact made for testing either watch heads or movements, with the latter becoming the standard in Swiss watchmaking.

The next step of serious chronometry is double certification — first, the movement following the COSC standards and then the watch head. This has been duly achieved by Omega and Tudor by working with a strict state-controlled authority, which is the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS). Rolex performs a similar certification following its own standards, and I think it is fair to say that these three brands are the champions of chronometry in the Swiss watch industry. You can read my earlier here on the different routes to chronometer certification.

Democratizing Watch Regulation

It might be bad news for the aftersales services at retailers and the subsidiaries of watch brands, but Horage’s aim with the MicroReg system is that anyone should be able to operate the regulating device to adjust the timing precision of their watch. Indeed, the MicroReg is a self-regulating device which combines not only high technology, but also traditional watchmaking principles. On one part of the movement, you will find a novel high-tech gadget developed by Horage’s partner company Miniswys, also based in Biel — the city where the Swatch Group is headquartered and where Rolex produces its movements — and which is a spin-off company of Creaholic, founded by a legend of the Swiss watch industry, Elmar Mock. Mock is the co-inventor with Jacques Müller of the Swatch watch, which would become the savior of the Swiss watch industry in 1983.

Miniswys has developed a technology which contains a ceramic component and a metal carrier that, together, forms a system called an “actuator.” It doesn’t contain any coils, electronic chips or magnets that would deter any mechanical watch lover. The electric tension to move this actuator back and forth is created by piezoelectricity, just as a firelighter does. A mechanical shock creates electricity, which is then combined with resonance, allowing for the actuator to move. And now comes the “sleeping watchmaker” into action — that’s how Horage has dubbed it — which is, in fact, a device inspired by the traditional “Grossmann Schwanenhals” micro-metric adjustment. This device will allow for -0.1 second and +0.1 second adjustments during the production and — once the movement has been cased — at the retailer before the watch is handed over to its owner. Finally, it can also be adjusted by the owner, who can tweak the timing precision to their personal environment and pattern of wearing the watch. Hence, without opening the caseback and without any watchmaking knowledge, anyone who wears the watch can correct the deviations arising, for example, from exposure to magnetic fields after the watch has been delivered to them, or from a shock during the transportation process, in order to reproduce the lab-certified performance of the watch on their wrist.

Presenting the Revolution 3 MicroReg

Powered by an inverted version of Horage’s Micro-Rotor K2 caliber, the Revolution 3 MicroReg is showing the whole magic on the dial side. Time is being indicated on a rotating disk at six o’clock and on the back, you will see analog hour, minute and seconds indications. The watch has a very cool tech look, but what makes it more appealing is its combination of the innovative and the traditional, with silicon, ceramic and, at the same time, a micro-rotor and Grossmann micro-metric adjustment. Many brands claim of combining “tradition and innovation,” but most of them are not going further than using some decoration techniques with new materials. Here we get a combo of high-tech and traditional technology,  21st century and 19th century, to enhance mechanical timing precision.

There is much to look forward to with the Horage Revolution 3 MicroReg, which can be pre-ordered for a late Summer 2026 delivery at what the brand calls a “Founder’s Edition price” of CHF 3,900. Although this is a piece that might not become iconic for its design, it certainly represents a technical milestone in the world of watchmaking.

For more information on this watch, visit the Horage website here.

Technical Specs: Horage Revolution 3 MicroReg

Movement: Self-winding inverted caliber K2; 72-hour power reserve
Functions: Hours, minutes and seconds
Case: 41mm × 10.05mm; 316L stainless steel; water-resistant to 100m
Dial: Time disk on dial side with display of peacock blue movement; analog hours, minutes and seconds on the back; Super-LumiNova filled Arabic numerals on time disk
Strap: Horage original custom rubber with stainless steel pin buckle
Price: CHF 3,900 (for Founder’s Edition)
Availability: Pre-ordered pieces to be delivered from Summer of 2026