Zenith

• The packaging is interesting, with its « book like » appearance. While I appreciate a nice wooden box like everyone else I guess, I sometimes wonder if this arms race (towards always bigger boxes) should maybe stop? Was for instance looking at my latest Omega purchase and the boxes are beautiful but huge. One will soon need a safe for the watches, a bookshelves for the books and a full dresser for the boxes themselves 😳 ?

• I feel that the customer care is put at the center since Zenith provides in the box both a return-card (to send the watch back without hassle if you don’t like it), as well as an invite to come and visit the manufacture in the times post-Covid.

(NB: this watch is the manufacture edition that you normally can only purchase onsite at the manufacture; not sure if the invite is present for every watch that they sell?)

Now coming to the watch itself:

•The size is nice and vintage-inspired. It suits very well what I had in mind and want to do with it, namely wear it during the summer months, unobtrusively but playfully.

•it has 19/16 lugs and pin buckle. Wasn’t easy but managed to find a brown, aged strap to reinforce the vintage vibes.

• the time keeping is good, as far as I can see without measuring it too precisely.

• the chronometer function itself I’m less sure: the START is rather hard, whereas the STOP and RESET are much smoother. Not sure if one should plan on some “breaking in” time or if that is a consequence of the design/architecture? Do you happen to know if that is always so?

•Also I’m not sure if the clutch is vertical or not and if one can keep it running constantly. But I really like the movement of the red second hand which brings life to the dial and hence let us run 🤭

Altogether I like it a lot and now start enjoying my new summer watch, with its red, white and blue elements.

It is a great color combination to wish to all the Americans a good “July 4th weekend” 😀