BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Breitling’s simplistic Navitimer range never really sat right with me. I’m not a purist, in fact, I’ve never owned a Breitling, but when you get stuck on an idea or design that just works, it’s challenging to get your mind around it. Enter the new Navitimer Automatic 41 Silver and Blue limited edition, which might well be the first of the simple Navitimers that I genuinely really like.
Let’s start with the classic Navitimer. It’s a chronograph with a black dial, cream-coloured subdials and a complicated slide rule bezel. It’s got some touches of red, but it’s primarily monochromatic, but everything’s balanced really well. My ideal Navitimer is on a polished stainless steel bracelet, because there’s no reason why you can’t show off every now and then, right?
Without those details, the three-handed Navitimers never seemed to work, and they just took away the fun for the sake of adding another range. But, Breitling seems to have taken a page out from IWC’s book and offered the new watch with blue hands and markers and a silvery dial. It’s simple but colour-matched well, the dial is clean and crisp, no fancy sunburst here to make things busier than they need to be. A date window is included at 6 Oclock because that’s standard these days, and in true Navitimer fashion, you can swizzle the bezel around thanks to the beaded grips.
The 41mm x 10mm stainless steel case is slim but still polished to give a classy experience. Inside it is the Breitling calibre 17, which is based on an ETA 2824-2 with at least 38-hours of power reserve. You can’t see it because it’s been obscured by its solid stainless steel back with the Breitling logo and ‘One of 500’ written on it.
The watch is presented on a blue alligator leather strap with contrasting white stitching and is priced at $4400 before sales tax, which is quite steep. It looks nice, though. I think Breitling finally got it right with this particular model.
Visit Breitling here.
