Breitling Navitimer 125th Anniversary Watch Review

The Breitling Watch Company has become famous for its unbelievably detailed, high end luxury watches. To commemorate their success, the company introduced the Limited Edition Breitling Navitimer Watch.

When you look at the company’s success, you realize that it is nothing short of phenomenal. From a tiny work shop in the Swiss Jura Mountains to the de facto leader in aviation oriented watches, this wrist watch company has come a very long way.

In celebration of this achievement, the company created the Navitimer 125th Anniversary Watch. With this wrist watch, Breitling will only produce 2009 stainless steel versions. Additionally, an 18 karat gold version will be produced as well. To make this version extra special (and hence, much, much more valuable to collectors and hobbyists), there will only be 125 pieces produced.

To distinguish this watch from the traditional Navitimer, the traditional bracelet has been replaced with the “Air Racer” style bracelet. This distinctive looking bracelet has a “retro” look, which includes large holes. Fortunately, this look only enhances the watch’s masculinity while retaining its look of elegance.

Another difference between this watch and the original is the placement of the calendar. With this watch, the date calendar is placed in the six o’clock position, resulting in a significantly cleaner look as compared to the original design.

Besides these two modifications, the watch is basically the same. The watch can be operated underwater up to 100 feet, it uses the Breitling 26 Caliber mechanical movement with 38 jewels, it possesses a 42 hour power reserve, and it operates at 28,800 vibrations per second.

The last significant aspect of this watch that we will discuss is the bidirectional, rotating slide rule bezel. Back when the original watch was created, many airplane navigators actually used this watch to perform complex calculations to determine their location. While no one needs this functionality anymore (very few of us don’t have GPS), it is still neat of Breitling to honor aviation’s heritage by keeping this outdated functionality.