BY DHANANJAY PATHAK
As a part of its 2021 novelties, Panerai has diversified its Luminor collection by adding three new chronograph watches. Featuring black, blue, and white dials and powered by a new automatic chronograph movement, these watches provide a breath of fresh air to a catalog that is overcrowded with similar-looking three-hand watches.
Panerai watches, since their inception, feature a distinctive design DNA that makes them stand out from the crowd. And while that isn’t a bad thing, having a peculiar aesthetic also means that a lot of them, even within sub-collections, look too familiar and redundant. The new Luminor chronograph watches help break this monotony bringing in more functionality whilst sticking to the brand’s DNA.
So, what we have with these new watches is a face that features a balanced and highly legible twin-register setup. The register at 3 records the chronograph minutes, and the register at 9, displays the running seconds. Furthermore, both registers are nicely sunken to add depth to the dial. The base dial in true Panerai fashion exhibits a sandwich-style construction with the layer on top featuring cutout hour indices to expose the layer of Superluminova underneath. This implementation, combined with the lume filled baton-style hands ensures that reading time is always easy in any condition. Another thing that separates this watch from its three-hand siblings is the tachymeter scale on the outer flange.
The case is machined from stainless steel and measures 44mm in diameter with a thickness of 15.65mm. Design-wise, the case looks quite familiar and features signature design touches such as the proprietary crown locking mechanism at 3. What makes the case visually intriguing is the distinctive chronograph pusher arrangement on the left of the case that balances the oversized crown assembly. The case is water-resistant to 100 meters, which I feel is a little disappointing, considering that the crown is threaded and the case is also quite thick.
Beating inside these watches is the new in-house calibre P.9200. This is a self-winding movement that comprises 41 jewels, operates at a frequency of 4 Hz, and offers an autonomy of around 42 hours, which in my opinion, is on the lower side compared to the competition.
The white dial variant (PAM01218) and the Black dial variant (PAM01109) will retail for USD9,200 and would come attached to a high-quality black alligator strap. The Blue sunburst dial variant (PAM01110) would be accompanied by a stainless-steel bracelet and will retail for USD 10,000.
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