MING Announces The 57.04 ‘Phoenix’ Monopusher Chronograph

The first watch of the 57.04 series was launched in celebration of the company’s 8th anniversary, and was released last August during Geneva Watch Days. Even for long time MING fans, it was a surprising debut which generated a lot of conversation, although it’s obvious from the design that this was intentional. The 57.04 Iris is a monopusher chronograph, powered by a modified Sellita caliber, SW562.M1, and it is as eye-catching a watch as MING has ever released, with triple stepped lugs and with an iridescent dial, covered with what MING calls a “multiphasic coating.” This is a thin film coating which selectively absorbs and reflects different wavelengths of light and which shows different colors depending on the angle at which it’s held – it’s a bit reminiscent of the so-called structural pigments which Citizen has been using recently, which have similar properties in terms of iridescence.

The MING 57.04 Iris

The Iris is both a bit of a break with the third-generation MING watches, which were more minimalist in their approach, and a logical extension of larger design themes which MING has been exploring ever since the 17.01 launched in 2017. The Iris is a limited edition and the 100 watches in the series sold out almost immediately. The next iteration of the model launches officially today, and it’s the aptly named 57.04 Phoenix, which represents a renewal of the 57.04 model, but with a different visual interpretation.

The Phoenix has essentially the same design elements as its predecessor, including the 40mm stainless steel case, three-step lugs, deeply dished dial, and crown-left monopusher configuration. However, where the Iris was an exploration of chromatic exuberance, the Phoenix offers a more restrained interpretation of the design. Most notably, the multiphasic coating has been moved to a plate underneath the main dial, which has radial cutouts allowing the color shifts to be seen – the effect is rather like seeing an ornamental carp in a pond, swimming far enough below the surface to be visible through intermittent flashes of color.

As is so often the case with MING watches, luminous material is used both for low-light and nocturnal legibility, but also as a design element. The hands, including the chronograph minute and center seconds hands, as well as the minute track in the minutes subdial (there’s no running seconds hand) are coated with blue-green emission Super-LumiNova X1, and the sapphire crystal is laser cut on its underside, with the longitudinal hour markers filled with MING’s proprietary “polar white” SLN compound, which was originally developed for the 37.02 Minimalist.

What the Phoenix gives up to the Iris in terms of play of color, I think it takes back in formal clarity. The difference between the two watches reminds me a little bit of the respective advantages of color and black and white photography – with color, of course, you get color; with black and white, the conventional wisdom is that you can see the structure of the composition more clearly and of course, the tonal structure (which is a term MING, and Ming, who’s a photographer, use of this watch in the press release). The Iris has an almost cinematic feel and the use of color gives it a very Baroque quality (aided and abetted by those triple stepped lugs) but the Phoenix is much more architectural in feel.

At launch, the Phoenix will be available for CHF 6250 on an FKM rubber strap, or for CHF 7250 on a MING Polymesh 3-printed titanium bracelet (I’d go the extra mile and get it on the bracelet, which is a remarkable piece of work in its own right). The Phoenix is available directly from MING or through one of the company’s retail partners.

The MING 57.04 Phoenix: case, 40mm x 11.85mm, 47.8mm lug to lug; 316L stainess steel with three step lugs; sapphire crystals front and back with double AR coating; top crystal, laser cut indexes with MING Polar White lume. 100M water resistance; lug width, 20mm.

Metallic deep dish upper dial with radial cutouts, baseplate with multiphasic color-shifting coating; hands, diamond cut with Super-LumiNova X1; chronograph minute counter “sandwich” disk, also coated with SLN X1.

Movement, Sellita for MING SW562.M1, rhodium coated mainplate with anthracite 3/4 bridge; hand wound, 60 hour power reserve, monopusher chronograph with left-hand crown and pusher.

Available on a 20mm FKM grey rubber strap, or MING Polymesh; 2 year warranty. Limited production but not a limited edition; 150 pieces planned for 2026.