![]() Under or around $10,000 you certainly have some nice in-house chrongraphs – think Breitling, Rolex, Omega, and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Sure, Patek has its 5170, Lange has its 1815, VC has its Harmony, which are all dress chronographs, but they are six to 10 times the price of this watch. I began this article by saying I believe the El Primero Chronograph Classic is playing its part in reviving the category of a dress chronograph at a reasonable price. Is it really the exact same movement that you can find in those pieces from the 60s and 70s, or has it been upgraded? There needs to be better communication here, because while some would call the El Primero an icon, others would call it "old." But, frankly, I would really like to know what Zenith has done to improve the El Primero in the last four-and-a-half decades. It's still a high beat (36,000 vb/h) movement and it has a solid 50-hour power reserve. This particular reference features caliber 4069, which lacks a date or hour register. So, how is the El Primero still ticking in a new watch in 2015? Sure, it went dormant for a little while, and then we started seeing some new improvements to the El Primero caliber. The Valjoux 72? That one hasn't seen a new watch in decades. Heuer/Breitling /Hamilton's Caliber 11/ Chrono-Matic is long, long gone. Does that make it bad? Certainly not, but consider the calibers that were most heavily used alongside the original El Primero. But, it is OLD – 46 years this year, to be exact. ![]() It was part of the first days of self-winding chronographs, and it has powered some absolutely incredible watches. My feelings towards the El Primero movement are mixed. When I saw that watch released last summer, I really believed that the Zenith of old – austere, classic styling, in-house movements, and little gimmickry – was being pushed out the door. This idea was so obviously misguided I simply could not believe it was happening – it did, and the partnership with the Rolling Stones continues to this day. We've seen a mish-mash of product offerings, from some absolutely bonkers limited editions in the Type 20 collections, including these at 60 mm, to this truly lovely lacquer dial El Primero Chronograph, to the very Hublot-feeling carbon striking tenth "lightweight." We saw some super impressive (though not to my taste, aesthetically) pieces like this celebrating the brand's 150th anniversary, and we saw a beefed-up El Primero with screw-down pushers that, while large for my taste, was well executed.įinally, around this time last year, we saw the downright embarrassing parlaying of Hublot-style marketing tactics to this relatively pure brand with the introduction of a Rolling Stones limited edition El Primero. Jean-Claude Biver, has been a bit of a curiosity to me. It was the base within the Ebel Chronographs, and the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, among others.I'll begin this review by discussing this watch within the context of the brand that produces it. Seeing a manufacture movement being used in another brand’s timepiece more often than not implies the value of the movement, be it in reliability or reputability. The El Primero was also a donor chronograph in the days when having an in-house chronograph was not the norm. But our favourite part of the watch is something quite unexpected. It bears the DNA of vintage chronographs, with thin lugs, and no date, broad pushers and thin line stripe markers. Moving away from a tri-compax to a bi-compax, the Classic is reminiscent of a ’40s chronograph. Notably, the Classic, removes all the subtitles and also takes away an hour subdial. The simple watch is the answer to the consistent debate over the unnecessary cluttering of the dial. On the other hand, there is the minimalism themed Zenith El Primero Classic Chronograph. The Zenith El Primero Classic, in 18K rose gold. Dufour went on to be CEO of Rolex in 2014, and the direction set is continued on by current CEO Aldo Magada. Thankfully, the brand was more rationally managed when Jean-Frédéric Dufour took helm of Zenith in 2009. But it almost went bust from the notoriety it earned under the years when Thierry Nataf was CEO of Zenith (2001 to 2009). Zenith’s El Primero has seen its good days during the 70’s and 80’s and even withstood the Quartz crisis. And an extremely rocky one to be precise. First introduced in 1969, the one of a kind chronograph, has stood the test of time. ![]() More recently, its increasing staple of well-priced and attractive watches with reliable in house movements makes Zenith one of our favourite watch brands. Zenith is the first manufacture to create an automatic integrated column wheel movement, and promptly christened it the El Primero. The reason for its name is an obvious one why Zenith chose to name their chronograph movement that. El Primero, translated from Spanish, means ‘the first’.
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