Although I have bought many new reps over the last 15-20 years this is my first ordered from a TD since I became involved with the forums about 1 ½ years ago now. Mind you I’ve done many m2m purchases but shied away from buying from a dealer due to some really unpleasant experiences just prior to joining.
Although I own other brands, Breitling has always been my favorite and I have owned many gens as well as reps during that time. Although I am the proud owner of two franken Navitimers, a fighters and a TT, when the new Navitimer 01 was announced I knew I had to have one. I also knew I wouldn’t be able to wait for one to
become available m2m.
Although I initially planned to buy one from Angus at Puretime, I eventually ended up ordering from Andrew at Trusty Time mostly due to method of payment limitations. They were nearly the same price with one charging more for the watch and less for shipping and the other less for the watch and more for shipping. It basically evened out in the end.
In the end I was extremely pleased with the service I received. I had needlessly resigned myself to be patient, as the process took much less time than I anticipated. The watch was ordered on March 8th and 5 days later on March 13th I received QC photos. I was unable to find any obvious flaws and approved them the same day. The watch arrived at my home in Southern California 5 days later on March 18th. Communication was excellent all through the process.
Upon receipt the watch proved as good as the QC pictures suggested, with no noticeable flaws.
All in all I was quite pleased with the look and quality of the watch with just a few qualifying comments. Of course we are still dealing with the sunken date wheel although with the white graphics on the black background it is much less obvious than on previous models. I won’t comment on the font style as I never found this to be a big deal on the earlier reps as some did.
The double AR on this model is as good as I've seen on an un-modded rep and the Lume is excellent too in my opinion
I immediately set about resizing the bracelet and was surprised to find that, unlike on previous reps, the bracelet was very supple, without any of the stiffness on previous examples, even with the screws tightly cinched down. Still, just for safety I removed and used Loctite on the screws before re-installing them.
I was pleasantly surprised with the fit between the SELs and the lugs, which was much better than on previous models. Also the shape of the lugs, especially the width and beveled outer edges, seemed very close to the gen. This is one of the more noticeable flaws in the earlier models in my opinion.
I also re-arched the clasp slightly, as I do on most, so that it fit the curvature of my wrist better and more comfortably. The marks on the clasp in this picture are lint, not scratches as they appear.
I’ve heard others comment about knurled edges of the bezel being wrong on earlier models too, but I never agreed with this as I have compared them with gen and found them to be very accurate. On this newer rep they appear very close to gen pictures although I don’t have a gen to compare directly with.
Unlike on the earlier watches the slide rule ring scale matches pretty well with those on the dial.
The back cover, to me, is one of the bigger improvements as it appears very close to the shape of the gen, at least in pictures.
Additionally, although the watch is stated on the official Breitling site as being 43mm in diameter and 14.25mm thick, the rep measures 42.5mm diameter and 15.5mm thick. I understand the additional thickness because of the date wheel problem, but although this affects the appearance very little I wonder with the amount of effort that must have been put into the design of the watch why the diameter could not have been copied more closely, especially when compared with my Datora, which is spot on.
Finally, although there may be very small flaws in the execution, this is a very nice rep with a high quality appearance. When I judge a rep I use this analogy. If this watch were placed in front of an average consumer (not nitpickers like us), on a table side by side with the gen, I doubt that person would be able to tell which was gen and which was rep. It may not be a super rep, but it’s darn nice just the same and I for one am quite pleased with it.
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