max bill Automatic
the Bauhaus benchmark
Junghans' 38mm Bauhaus icon runs a J800.1 caliber with 38 hours of reserve, domed sapphire, and a US street price that has climbed past $1,600.
Scored by the published HypeScore formula from the specification and the street price. Never edited by hand, never influenced by affiliation. Read the formula →
Max Bill was a Bauhaus trained architect who took on watch design almost as a side project, and the discipline of that background is still the whole pitch six decades later. The Automatic is the 38mm steel reading of his 1961 dial: polished case, matte silver face, luminous hands, and nothing else asking for your attention.
The numbers are plain because Junghans keeps them plain. 38.0mm across, 10.0mm thick, domed sapphire with an anti-reflective coating, rated to 5 bar so washing up, rain, splashes, and even a bath are fine but a shower or the pool is not, per Junghans’s own resistance table. Inside is the caliber J800.1: 25 jewels, 28,800 semi-vibrations an hour, hacking seconds, hand-windable, a 38 hour reserve. Junghans never names the base movement, and the forums have spent years arguing which ETA or Sellita is actually under the rotor without Junghans ever settling it.
Here is the part that costs something. At $1,595 to $1,695 you are paying design-icon money for a caliber with less than half the reserve of a Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 that sells for less than half the price. The case is genuinely well resolved and the Bauhaus argument is real, but the spec sheet undersells what you are asked to pay. I would rather see this watch land nearer $1,000.
The Orient Bambino 38 borrows the same quiet dial philosophy for around a tenth of the money, if you can live without the name on it. The Christopher Ward Twelve costs a few hundred less and spends the difference on an integrated bracelet instead of a pedigree. Buy the Junghans for the design and the story behind it, not for what is ticking inside.
- Junghans: max bill Automatic (27/3500.02) product page · Reference number, case diameter and height, caliber name, power reserve, crystal, dial finish, water resistance rating and strap, as published by Junghans.
- Junghans: Caliber J800.1 owner's manual · Hacking seconds function, hand-winding instructions, 25 jewels, 28,800 semi-vibrations per hour, DIN 8309 anti-magnetic rating and the water-resistance usage table, as published by Junghans.
- Junghans: max bill collection page · Supports the design's long-running Bauhaus heritage ('remained almost unchanged for 60 years').
- Exquisite Timepieces: authorized dealer listing · Used only to sanity check the current US street price (listed at $1,670), never as a source for any spec figure.
What reviewers say.
EMBEDDED WITH FULL CREDIT · VIEWS GO TO THE CREATORCreator videos appear here as YouTube embeds, so every view lands on the creator's own channel where it belongs. We never re-host, re-cut or re-upload another reviewer's footage.
Where to buy.
Affiliate links, and commissions never touch the score. Retail partners are not live yet, so until they are, this rail points at the manufacturer's own listing rather than an untracked link.