The first thing you notice about the new A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split isn’t the movement — it’s the silence. Glasshaus-style press rooms are rarely quiet, but when the brand lifted the covers at Hampton Court Palace during the Concours of Elegance this first weekend of September, the room did that collective inhale that only happens when a manufacture has done something genuinely unexpected. The Triple Split, Lange’s most mechanically brazen chronograph, has gone platinum.
Presented as a limited edition of 100 pieces, the new reference 424.025F joins the white gold 2018 original and the pink gold 2021 edition — the two precious metal siblings that have defined the model’s brief but dense history. What changes here is not the architecture, because the Triple Split’s architecture needed no fixing. What changes is the character. In platinum, with a rhodié-coloured main dial and darker grey auxiliary counters, Lange has turned its most technical chronograph into something approaching a dress watch. It is a curious and rather brilliant piece of staging.
Why the Triple Split Still Stands Alone
Every rattrapante chronograph can split seconds. The Triple Split splits seconds, minutes and hours simultaneously — three pairs of blued and rhodiumed hands that run synchronously until the pusher at 10 o’clock freezes the trio. The party trick is that intermediate and comparative times can now be captured for as long as twelve hours, not sixty seconds. Lange’s people at the presentation were quick to point out the marathons, the classic car rallies, the endurance events — use cases that a conventional split-seconds chronograph simply cannot touch. When Anthony de Haas, Director Product Development, called it “a league of its own,” he was not exaggerating, and he has been building chronographs at Lange long enough to know.
The flyback function remains, operated from the crown-side pushers, letting you reset and restart a measurement in a single motion. And there is the 2005-patented disengagement mechanism, which lifts the friction of the stopped rattrapante hands and the advancing minute counters off the seconds arbor, so the balance never starves. It is the kind of invisible engineering that separates a Lange chronograph from a merely complicated one.
The dial is the story this time. In place of the 2018 model’s grey-on-white-gold and the 2021 blue-on-pink-gold compositions, the platinum watch wears a rhodié silver main dial with deeper grey auxiliary counters at 4, 8 and 12 o’clock, plus the UP/DOWN power-reserve indicator at 6. Red accents on the tachymeter scale and the hour and minute counters give the cool monochrome palette a pulse. The applied hour markers are rhodium-plated 18k gold, and the blue steel of the rattrapante hands reads almost black against the silvered ground — restrained in the metal in a way the renders never quite convey.
The L132.1 Calibre, In the Metal
Flip it over and the sapphire caseback reveals one of the most photographed movements in high horology. The L132.1 is assembled from 567 parts, and the finishing is pure Glashütte: bridges of untreated German silver with Glashütte ribbing, straight-grained levers, polished chamfers on the acute internal angles, five screwed gold chatons, and a hand-engraved balance cock. In the metal, the depth of the construction gives the movement a topographical quality — you read it in layers rather than at a glance. This is a movement that rewards the loupe, and it is one of the few worth carrying one for.
On the wrist the 43.2mm platinum case carries its 15.6mm height surprisingly well, though it is unapologetically a large watch. The dark brown alligator strap with the quick-release platinum deployant buckle balances the mass, and the grey-and-brown combination is more versatile than the spec sheet suggests. Water resistance is a modest 3 bar, which is entirely in keeping with the Triple Split’s lineage — this has never been a tool watch, it is a demonstration.
Priced at approximately €210,000, the reference 424.025F is the most expensive expression of the Triple Split yet — but among 100 pieces, the question was never whether they would sell. It was whether Lange would make them. For collectors who missed the 2018 and 2021 editions, this is likely the last, and arguably the most characterful, chapter of the story. For everyone else, it is a reminder that the Triple Split remains the only chronograph in the world that can split twelve hours of measurement.
Specifications
| Reference | 424.025F |
|---|---|
| Case | 950 platinum, 43.2mm diameter, 15.6mm height |
| Caseback | Sapphire crystal, screw-down |
| Dial | Rhodié 925 silver with grey auxiliary dials, rhodium-plated 18k gold applied markers, luminous hour and minute hands |
| Crystal | Sapphire, domed |
| Water Resistance | 3 bar |
| Movement | Manufacture calibre L132.1, manually wound, 567 parts, 46 jewels, 5 screwed gold chatons |
| Functions | Hours, minutes, subsidiary seconds, flyback chronograph with triple rattrapante for up to 12 hours, UP/DOWN power-reserve indicator, tachymeter scale |
| Frequency | 21,600 vph (3 Hz) |
| Power Reserve | 55 hours |
| Strap | Dark brown alligator leather, quick-release 950 platinum deployant buckle |
| Availability | Limited edition of 100 pieces, available from boutiques and authorised retailers |
| Price | €210,000 (approx. US$245,000) |
The Triple Split’s journey from 2018 to now is one of Lange’s most deliberate — a manufacture that rebuilt itself from nothing in 1990 does not do casual releases. For a deeper look at chronographs and how they work, our guide to chronograph watches and understanding complications in horology cover the fundamentals this release builds on beautifully.
