This year at Watches and Wonders, Jaeger-LeCoultre focused almost exclusively on the Reverso. This is not an uncommon approach from Richemont brands, focusing on a single model line each year, and I rather like it for giving the families breathing room of a few years between overhauls and new models. It’s closer to what car companies do, and I’m of the opinion that this is a nice cadence. The new Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Geographic is one of the new Reversos, and while I initially thought its beauty would outweigh my concerns about its size, I was wrong.

The problem with the Reverso is that increasing it even slightly can have a serious impact on wrist presence. However sleek and rounded the case may be, at the end of the day, the Reverso is a rectangular block of a watch, and beyond a certain point it becomes too bulky. Throughout the article, you see it on 6.6-inch wrists. On my 7-inch wrist it wore slightly better, but still too pronounced for a Reverso. That last bit is key. At 29.9mm wide, 49.4mm long, and 11.14mm thick, it has the length and thickness of a normal watch with the width of a Reverso — that just doesn’t work. The new rose gold Reverso Tribute is smaller in every dimension, including almost 4mm shorter and thinner. Immediately after trying on the time-only Tribute, the Geographic wears like a magical shoebox on the wrist. Yes, it’s magical, but it’s still a shoebox.

All the things that JLC can do with the Reverso are no doubt impressive. They’d be a good lot more impressive if they didn’t have to enlarge the case every time, though. I suppose I’m a Reverso purist. I’m fine with a Duoface or a really any complication, as long as it doesn’t involve dramatically changing how the watch wears. The new Geographic is offered in steel and rose gold. Neither wears better than the other, but they are both comfortable on wrist. JLC has paired them with very nice quick release leather straps. You actually get two straps: black alligator and brown calf for the gold, black and blue calf for the steel. Water resistance is set at 30 meters, but who cares.

Let me move on to the dials and functions, so I can calm down. In my news piece about the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Geographic, I expressed dismay at the inclusion of a big date display. I worried that it was unnecessary and would stick out like a sore thumb. I will acknowledge that such a date execution may be the best option for the Reverso, whose dial doesn’t lend itself to other implementations, but I still find the date unnecessary here. The point is the world timer on the reverse side, and the date really isn’t of consequence. But my fear of it being too overt was not borne out. Your eye is initially drawn to it, but it’s positioned well and integrated by use of a polished frame, so it doesn’t bother. The remainder of the time dial is the same as other modern Reversos: polished beveled hour markers and matching dauphine hands, a railroad minute track, and a small seconds at 6 o’clock.

The greatest thing about this watch, and what makes it the Geographic, is the world time display on the flip side. While JLC currently uses the Geographic name for far less artistic watches, including the Polaris and the Master Control, I think this execution beats those. They both use small second time display and an aperture at the bottom of their round dials, but this both simplifies and sophisticates the complication. Instead of a more common rotating city disc, JLC has set the hour disc to rotate. This allows them to beautifully engrave the city ring on the case back, and to have an enameled projection of the globe within the hour wheel.  The hour wheel is split into day and night halves, but more thoughtful is the position of the globe projection. Not unseen, but much appreciated, the cities on the city ring align with their approximate location on the projection. (You can find this excecution on the Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra World Timer and the ZTAGE Hybrid Original Wordltimer.) To use the Reverso world timer, all you have to do is set your reference city to its current time, and the watch will do the rest, advancing the wheel each hour without intervention. Et voilà!

As mentioned in that new release article, the watches house a new, in-house caliber that fully integrates all its complications. The manual Calibre 834 has a 42-hour power reserve and is made up of 209 components, including its patented date discs, which operate with a tiny hook on one disc that grabs the other disc to begin displaying double-digit dates. More voilà!

It’s beautiful but in the end, it wasn’t meant for me. I need my Reversos to be more classically sized, and I stand by my position that the model isn’t the best platform for high-end complications or really anything that bulks up the iconic case. Still, I’ll champion the world timer execution as amongst the best out there. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Geographic in steel (Q714845J)  is priced at $21,200 USD, and in pink gold (Q714256J) is priced at $34,900 USD, with the latter being limited to 150 pieces. For more information, please visit the Jaeger-LeCoultre website.