In the early years of the 21st century, Zenith was a brand that looked to the past — honouring their iconic El Primero in its original guise, and taking flights of nostalgic fancy with its Pilot’s collection. All fine watches, but comfortable takes on familiar forms. In 2017, the brand abruptly changed direction, with a thoroughly modern iteration of an old name — Defy — taking centre stage. One of the pillars of this new Zenith vision was the El Primero 21 (a watch we looked at in some detail here), which took the iconic high-frequency chronograph that is the El Primero and rocketed it to the next level. You see, the regular EP runs 5Hz, allowing 1/10th of a second accuracy. The chronograph on the El Primero 21 runs at a boggling 50Hz, meaning that the chrono hand makes a single revolution in a second, and offers 1/100th of a second accuracy. Of course this rate only applies to the chronograph operation; timekeeping runs at a more sedate and less power-hungry 5Hz, which is plenty accurate for day-to-day timekeeping. This year we were treated to a new take on the Defy: the 44mm case is offered here in carbon,…
The post HANDS-ON: The defiant one – Zenith’s El Primero Defy 21 Carbon appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.
Continue reading ‘HANDS-ON: The defiant one – Zenith's El Primero Defy 21 Carbon’
