INTRODUCING: The Longines Conquest VHP – very precise, very cool

Felix Scholz

We don’t talk much about quartz here at Time+Tide, and that’s usually for a good reason. Most quartz watches are pretty boring. There are, however, some exceptional quartz technologies out there, and the just-announced Longines Conquest VHP is a great example of this.

VHP stands for Very High Precision and it is, believe it or not, a reissue of a model originally released in 1984, when ultra-accurate quartz represented one of the watch world’s great frontiers.

As you’d expect from a watch with precision in the name (albeit in acronym form), accuracy is a key feature. The Conquest VHP boasts a deviation of +5/-5 seconds a year, compared to an accuracy range of some 25 seconds per month for regular watches. These impressive figures are due to a movement developed by ETA exclusively for Longines, which offers a host of features absent from your typical quartz, including thermo-compensation, five-year battery and a gear position system designed to help the hands re-align in case of shocks or magnetic displacement.

Aside from the impressive tech specs, the Conquest VHP line looks handsome too – offered in three-hand/calendar and chronograph options, in an array of sizes and blue, black silvered or carbon fibre dials. Not bad, Longines, not bad at all.