The Breitling Watch Blog

Recently, I bought both the SuperOcean Heritage 46 and 38 watches for my Fiance and myself as wedding gifts. We are getting married on July 11, 2009, and wanted to have a couple of Breitlings to commemorate the occasion. Since Much of my recent life has revolved around watches and Breitling more specifically, we felt matching Breitling watches were the way to go.

So I set about finding an AD that offered a good price for the purchase, which I did. The SuperOcean Heritage 46 in Black is a very popular watch, and the wait time on that watch is approximately 6 weeks, which is what it finally took for the watch to arrive. But it sure was worth the wait!

They are truly stunning watches, with a very business-black dial and presence on the wrist. Case and bracelet craftmanship is of the typical high Breitling quality. The Specs are as follows:

SuperOcean Heritage 46
Diameter: 46mm
Movement: Breitling Caliber 17
Water Resistance: 200m
More Info Link

SuperOcean Heritage 38
Diameter: 38mm
Movement: Breitling Caliber 37
Water Resistance: 200m
More Info Link

The SuperOcean Heritage 38 is a bit small for me, but to be quite honest, I think that is more than big enough for many wrists. It is slightly small by today’s standards, and while a men’s watch, we decided that it would be a good watch for my fiance as it would match very well with mine. It is a bit large on her wrist, but looks quite nice still.

Here is a nice close up of the dial detail. You will notice that one of the Lume Dots is slightly off-centre. It isn’t noticeable to the naked eye really, but under a loupe or zoom up in a good macro shot its easy to see. Otherwise the dial is immaculate. You can see the slight bluish hue that comes from the double Anti-reflective coating on the Sapphire Crystal.

A nice Bokeh shot with the SOH 46 in the foreground. I think these photographs turned out quite nice, with a slight bit of overexposure. The mesh bracelet is very cool, and fits VERY comfortably on the wrist. It is the most comfortable bracelet that Breitling has made, in my opinion. While the style of the mesh might take a while to really appreciate, the comfort is noticeable immediately.

Bezel clicks very solidly and reeks of quality, as does the crown movement and case machining. Given the price of these watches, I do appreciate them better than the price I would have had to pay for matching Rolex Datejust watches. I probably paid just over half of what a matching pair of all-steel Datejust watches would have costed, and the mens watch would only be 36mm. However, the woman’s datejust does look better for women, I believe.

Here is a shot of the engraving done on the side of the watch. additionally we had our names engraved on the back in an arch, which turned out quite nicely as well. The case-side engraving was a really cool touch, and feels a bit more permanent than the engraving on the caseback, which is something that we liked about it.

Here is the video review for the Hamilton X-Wind Chronograph. As I had mentioned in my regular review, I had always wanted an X-Wind since I tried one on in the Caribbean. Its a nice looking watch, like most Hamiltons. Just a small refresher.. 44mm Diameter, swiss made, Valjoux 7750 movement. Sapphire Crystal. Left-hand crown. Enjoy!

My second and last Pyrolume Watch video review. I don’t think that Pejman at Pyrolume appreciated my lukewarm reviews of his watches, but that’s the way I feel about them. They are essentially Alpha watches with a custom made dial. Look neat, yes, but the premium for the dial on what is essentially a dressed up $50 watch is pretty high.

Having said that, his dials are pretty unique and they are not something you can get anywhere else, and they are CNC’d in-house and hand lume-painted. I think I would appreciate them more if he used a $250 base watch and charged $500 for the watch, however.

New Straps reviews have been posted at Paneraisource… some really nice straps have been posted. TWB – The Watch Boys, Zeugma, Strapluxe and a new Heroic18 review have been posted.

New reviews a continually being posted here, so keep your eyes peeled! Also look for updated reviews on older existing reviews as new straps are always being reviewed!

Paneraisource Aftermarket Strap Reviews

I picked up this watch a while back, but hadn’t gotten around to posting a short review on it. GJVB is a small swiss watch company that makes their cases and fits them with Valjoux 7750 Chronograph movements. All their watches use some variation of the 775x series of movements, and they all use the same case with different dial and hand combinations.

This one is the Sports model with white dial. One of the nicest features of this watch is the fine black out-lined hands, which looks fantastic against the white dial. The case measures a modest (by today’s standards) 40mm diameter, but is plenty wide enough for my wrist size and in fact is quite well suited to me.

The bracelet is all stainless as well, as I prefer the bracelet over the strap models. It seems like no matter how much I try to get into strapped watches, the bracelet always calls me back. Aside from Panerais and serious solid gold dress watches, I can’t get used to any other watches on straps. The fully polished case on the Von Burg goes very well with the watch, giving it some presence, but still a very understated overall appearance.

The body, while only 40mm in diameter, is quite long so sits bigger on the wrist than many 40mm watches do. Lume is very strong, with numbers and three central hands all glowing. Day-date is typical Valjoux 7750 configuration, and works correctly. Not much else to say other than at secondary market pricing around $500 for this watch is a fantastic deal. Quite a bit more satisfying than many other Hamilton and other brands of Valjoux 7750 watches for some reason. The quality of the bracelet is quite good. I’ve always felt that Hamilton lacked in that area a bit.