The Breitling Watch Blog

Zenith continues to direct their styling back to the Classic stuff they did, and away from the Defy and Chronomaster designs which defined the company during the last few years. This is refreshing after seeing some overly crazy looking designs from the firm.

The Captain comes in a 40mm stainless steel or in 18kt rose gold with display back showing off the Zenith Elite 670 movement.

I was browing in my latest issue of Watch Time magazine, and noticed a new Zenith El Primero watch called the Striking 10th Chronograph, which has a new 1/10th second Chronograph timer. In addition to the remarkably accurate chronograph, the watch returns to Zenith’s roots as far as Style. While this is not new for companies such as Breitling and IWC as they have re-released vintage watch designs, this is a drastic change of direction for Zenith, who went the complete opposite direction by dropping their old style completely when they went with the Chronomaster and Defy watches.

See the video!

I love Zenith watches. The Defy watches, the Chronomasters, everything. The Academy watch is Zenith’s premier line, and the Academy Zero-G Tourbillion is the lastest addition. Using the Caliber 8801 El Primero Tourbillon movement, this watch beats at 36,000vph, and offers a 3-Dimensional Tourbillon cage. Platinum rotor and 160-part gyroscopic carriage are just some of the features.

With this model Zenith rotated the movement 45-degrees to to place the Tourbillon Cage at 4:30 and the Time at 10:30. This gives the watch a very nice offset look.

Jean-Frédéric Dufour is the new President and CEO for Zenith SA as of June 1, 2009. Philippe Pascal, LVMH President, named Dufour the new Zenith President and CEO and comes to Zenith since being at Chopard since 2001. He replaces Theirry Nataf, who held the position previously.

Zenith has undergone a large number of changes since Nataf took over so it will be interesting to see what kind of direction the company takes under the direction of Dufour.

This is a video review of my Zenith Defy Classic Power Reserve watch. I love this watch, and didn’t realize that I would really love it as much as I do. Looking through all the Defy series of watches from Zenith, the majority of them looked very cool, but perhaps too cool. The Defy Extreme series of watches look amazing, but they also looked like a sophisticated analog version of a Casio G-shock at the same time, which takes away from the class.

The Defy classic lines are just crazy enough, without being off the charts, and look fantastic. I think the 43mm size of the Defy Classic Power Reserve is perfect, and with the added power reserve complication it is a nice touch. The Zenith Elite movement is also very nicely done and has the unique ability to move the date forwards as well as backwards. Enjoy the review!