News · Longines
Longines reads the remaining wind off the centre post
The Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve puts its 72 hours on a printed ring in the middle of the dial, not in a subdial.
Hen & Mills Editorial · 2 min read · 8 August 2026
Most power reserve indicators live in a subdial or crawl around the outside of the dial, where they take up a corner and get read about once a week. Longines has put this one in the middle. The scale is a printed ring sitting around the centre of the dial, graduated in sixteens from zero, and it has its own short black pointer on the same axis as the hands.
It is a layout that asks something of the reader, because the numerals are set radially and the ones on the lower half of the ring are therefore upside down. It also looks like nothing else at the price, and after about a day you stop noticing that you are reading it at all.
Silicon under a 1950s face
The movement is the calibre L896.5, self-winding, beating at 25,200 vibrations an hour, with a monocrystalline silicon balance spring and a power reserve Longines quotes at up to 72 hours. Longines also lists the watch as magnetic resistant, which is the practical benefit of that hairspring rather than a marketing line about it.
Three days of reserve matters more on this watch than on most, because the whole front of the dial is given over to telling you how much of it is left. A 40-hour movement with a central power reserve display would have been slightly absurd.
Thirty-eight millimetres, five bar
The case is stainless steel at 38.00mm, water resistant to 5 bar, under a sapphire crystal with several layers of anti-reflective coating on both sides. Functions are hours, minutes, seconds, a framed date and the central power reserve. The Conquest name goes back to 1954, when it became the first Longines line to have its name protected with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.
Five variations are listed: a light blue opaline dial, black, anthracite, opaline ivory, and the light blue again on a steel bracelet. The light blue is the one worth having. It is pale enough to read as a colour rather than a novelty, and it makes the black printing of the reserve ring legible in a way the anthracite cannot.
AU$6,575, or AU$6,825 on steel
Longines lists the alligator strap versions at AU$6,575 on its Australian site and the bracelet at AU$6,825, with a five-year warranty. Five bar and an alligator strap tell you where this sits: it is a dress watch wearing a sports name.
The styling will get the attention and the movement deserves it more. Seventy-two hours and a silicon balance spring in a 38mm steel case is a lot of watch for the money, and the five-year warranty Longines attaches to it says the brand agrees.