The whole idea behind this modern watch is to be the closest (visually, at least) to what’s probably the most famous watch in the entire history of Zenith, the reference A386, or the inaugural three-colour El Primero watch. Without doing the entire story of the El Primero again – the story of its creation, discontinuation and revival can be read here – we can’t escape the topic of 1969 when talking about the Chronomaster Original.

And I had the opportunity to spend some time with it on the wrist. The watch that really did it for me last year was the smaller, more retro-styled Zenith Chronomaster Original. Objectively, it is a great watch that most of our team considered a home run.

In 2021, the brand showed impressive creativity in the field of El Primero-based watches, mainly with the introduction of the praised Chronomaster Sport. Recurring readers of MONOCHROME certainly know my love for classic-looking, historical chronographs with compact dimensions, and that specific Zenith had long been on my personal wishlist… until the brand discontinued it. Mr Tornare, take a bow.For a long time, Zenith had a watch named the El Primero 38mm in its collection, a sort of direct descendant to the classic A386 watch, despite not being entirely true to the original design. The Original and quite possibly the best. There are strap options, too, and, of course, given its role in the watch, the El Primero gets its moment in the sun through a gaping sapphire case back. Cool as that was and is, it’s an acquired taste, so the new collection has a more mainstream three-link bracelet design. The 1960s model had a laddered design created by specialist Gay Frères, as seen on some of Zenith’s Chronomaster Revival models recently. One area of difference is the bracelet design. Despite the level of detail, and that its squeezed into a relatively small dial by modern chronograph standards, the read-out is fabulously well balanced and, dare I say it, far clearer than on the Chronomaster Sport. The inner of these still shows 100 segments, now used to break down the ten seconds it takes for the red hand to complete a full tour of the dial the outer, once a tachymeter, now shows the tenths of a second. New to the design is how the two scales around the outside edge of the dial are used.

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