The German watchmaker Glashütte Original has always been known for their more traditional takes on watch designs, and they’ve designed some really neat retro looking watches like their 60s inspired SeaQ dive watch that cater to the dedicated enthusiast market. Today we have with us a watch from their Pano collection, it’s the blue dial moon-phase variant called the PanoMaticLunar, sporting a steel case on a black leather croc strap.
Design Language
Of course, this is a watch coming from the area of Glashütte, a part of Germany famous for not only watchmaking – but a very specific style of watchmaking art with the use of German silver for their movement plates, swan neck adjustment designs, and their iconic three-quarter plate for movement stability.
At a distance beyond two feet, the watch indeed just looks like any other with a classic case shape, but as you bring it in closer the details begin to emerge with the offset hour and minute display that look like colliding sub-dials. The seconds display is depressed inside the dial, with the hour display layered on top. If you’re familiar with the works of Glashütte Original, or even A. Lange & Söhne for that matter, this layout might not come as a surprise to you, but if you’re someone who’s been in the Swiss watch scene without much exposure to the creations from Germany this style is a nice change away from the norm.
The unique layout of the dial makes efficient room of the dial, pretty much on point with German engineering. Since the two time displays are off to the left, there’s plenty of room on the right side for the moon-phase and the panorama date display, both of which appear to be placed in an unorthodox manner – again going against the grain of what you’d expect from a high-end Swiss counterpart.
The dial color is of a deep night blue with a sunburst like effect, closer inspection reveals very fine concentric circling inside the time display windows, and a flat finish on the rest of the dial.
Wearability and Functions
The PanoMaticLunar has a fairly regular looking 40mm case with an average thickness. Actually, before placing it on wrist I had the impression that the case was on the thick end of the spectrum for a dress watch, but it fit quite gracefully when placed on wrist.
The case is not designed to be innovative in anyway with its small polished bezel and contrasting brushed sides. While it doesn’t really stand out as anything too special it absolutely conforms to the Glashütte Original brand DNA, this is quite apparent if you compare it to some other watches from their catalogue. Another aspect you’ll notice are the extremely short lugs, and if you have a small wrist like me, you’ll already know the benefits that stout lugs can provide – consequently for a 40mm dress watch with a large dial, the watch fits exceptionally well on wrist. I will say though that it does lean more towards the smart casual side for me due to the presence it provides.
The selling feature of this watch, leaving aside its incredible craftsmanship, is going to be the moon-phase function. While the moon-phase display on this particular model is quite small it’s expertly executed and even displays a time graduation from 0 to 29.5 allowing you to monitor every day of the full cycle of the moon. The disk used to display the moon-phase is also beautifully decorated with a brushed background, and polished moon and stars. It can be set using the pusher on the side of the case as it usual with most mechanical moon-phase watches.
In-House Caliber 90-02
We’ve now covered the exterior appearance of the watch, but flipping it over and looking through the exhibition caseback exposes the stunning in house Caliber 90-02 with the small skeletonized rotor. This is a fully hand decorated movement, quite rare to see at this price point, and it’s spectacularly done.
My eyes were immediately drawn to both the rotor with the yellow gold edging to provide its swinging momentum, and the duplex swan neck fine adjustment, which is the open section of the movement that looks like a swan – it’s the most impressive I’ve seen in any watch at this price.
The rest of the movement is complete with a three quarter plate, blued screws, and polished steel parts. The PanoMaticLunar is packing a ton of value, and if you’re in the market for a dressier watch that can double as occasional smart casual and is also equipped with some haute horology aspects from Germany – look no further.
For more information visit the official Glashütte Original website here.
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