If you’re a loyal Doug’s Watches viewer—which you ought to be—you’ll know that Nomos lent me a selection of their pieces to let me talk about all things colour in watches, which has been great. But I want to dive deeper into this watch specifically: the Tetra.

The Club Campus is Nomos’ statement that their watches are bold, fun, and against the grain, for people who are bold, fun, and against the grain.

But when you turn to the Tetra, you find something different entirely.

In front of me are two watches from the Tetra lineup: the Ochra, this sort of yellowy-beige, and the Terra, an earthy red somewhat like terracotta.

If you’re familiar with Nomos through the Club Campus or the Worldtimer that launched back at Watches & Wonders 2025, then you’ll likely expect the rest of the lineup to be bold and colourful—but you’d be wrong.

There’s a green, the Salvia, and a black called Basalt, alongside your whites, purples, soft pinks, and greys.

The Ochra, Terra, Salvia, and Basalt all cite a sort of Grand Seiko–esque natural inspiration. It’s a more grown-up affair, and that’s because this is what the Tetra is: a more grown-up Nomos.

Whereas the Club Campus comes in at under £1,500 in both 36mm and 38mm guises, these Tetras fall just short of £2,000, placing them into one of the most competitive segments of the watch market—against Longines, TAG, Oris, and used Tudors and Omegas.

And while you can tell these exist in the same design language and have a similar familial vibe as the Club Campus, these, in the hand, feel miles ahead in overall build. Perhaps by having a more subtle colour palette, this gives the watch a more mature, less Toytown-esque aesthetic, contributing to that feeling.

Perhaps it’s just the sharp angles on the case that make the Tetra, in comparison to the Club, feel like a more robust affair. But there’s definitely something here that is elevating this watch and justifying that price increase.

It’s a watch YouTuber trope to mention that a square watch wears larger than a comparably sized circular watch—but I need to. The disparity isn’t as large as you may expect. These are 29.5mm wide, 6.5mm thick, and have a lug-to-lug of 40.5mm. The Tetra has much shorter lugs than the Club does, so it doesn’t wear like a massive watch, but perhaps more comparable to what a 40mm dress watch would wear like, thanks to the rather minimal dial.

As a square, dressier watch, this automatically finds itself in comparison with that icon: the Cartier Tank. While many watches that enter this space—like the Hamilton Boulton and Longines DolceVita—often find themselves constrained to the position of just another homage watch (a shame, but a harsh reality).

The Nomos Tetra cannot be relegated to the category of homage watch or clone. It is something new entirely.

For a start—and to point out the obvious—this is a watch with four sides, but it’s a square, not a rectangle like the Tank. The minimal dial layout is undeniably Nomos, with that sort of mid-century modernist wall-clock vibe. This is Nomos’ take on a four-sided watch, not their take on a Tank, and that distinction is incredibly important.

With the switch from bold colours, as we see on the Club and the Worldtimer, to this more subdued palette, Nomos both acknowledge the expectation that a square watch is dressier and, through the use of colour, reaffirm what Nomos are known for.

While you could perhaps make the argument that this is Nomos accepting that their bold and garish pieces will never be high sellers, and that they need to offer something more versatile to maintain commercial viability, I’d suggest it’s something else entirely.

Modernism and Bauhaus are often conflated as an aesthetic and a set of design principles that are one and the same—but they are not. Bauhaus was a design movement, where design was governed by a set of rules laid out by Walter Gropius. One of the key principles is that form follows function.

And the function of a square watch, in our modern understanding, is to be a little more refined—a little classier, a bit dressier—and the Tetra does this perfectly.

This is a modern interpretation of a Bauhaus square watch, and if that’s what you’re looking for in your next watch, I can’t really think of any competition.

So if you’ve been around my channel before, you’ll know I have the AURA system—my semi-objective, semi-holistic way of ranking watches.

Aestheticism – Look, obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but 7.
Utility – Based on the principle of minimum input, maximum output. Applied to watches, that means value for money – 7.
Romanticism – 8. You’ve got lots to fall in love with.
Authenticity – 10.

Not too bad a scorer.