Here at SwissWatchExpo. We want to help you find the watch of your dreams and the watch
of your dreams might be the Rolex 116500 Daytona, the Panda variation. I think it's
everybody's grail watch right now, but if you've checked the prices lately, you know,
that these watches are really in the realm of sort of a financial investment at this point,
more so than just a watch that you would buy and wear and not worry about.
So we've got some alternatives for you coming up. Fresh from the Showcase.
So if you just Google the word Panda with a watch, what you'll find is in the world of watches. When
we talk about a Panda dial, it is typically a chronograph where the three sub-dials are
gonna be black and the dial itself is white. Now you'll see reverse Panda where the dial's black
and the sub-dials are silver or white. You'll see them configured where the sub-dials are at 12,
9, and 6 versus being at 3, 6, and 9. But there are a lot of different variations,
but the one that people really mean when they say Panda right now in 2022 is the 116500
Rolex Daytona. This one right here. So, it's a beautiful watch. And it certainly is
something that is a wonder to behold, but it's got a lot of intricacies, a lot of things that make it
some in ways better in some ways, not as good as some of the competition.
So we want to talk about some of the competition watches. Some of these two that we've got here
today, we have a Zenith Chronometer Sport and an Omega Speedmaster Racing. And they're both in the
range of about a quarter to a fifth of the price of the Rolex Daytona, which probably puts it more
into that range of a watch that you could wear and not worry about and not be stressed out about
it the whole time you've got it. So, I want to go over some of the features of these. On the Zenith,
it's a little bit more of an old-school-looking watch. It's 40-and-a-half-millimeter,
whereas the Daytona is 40-millimeter. You can see it's just a little bit bigger. And
when you look at the dial on the Zenith, there is no question with that black ceramic bezel
and the dial configuration that they've taken their inspiration from the Rolex model.
But I really feel like they've gone a step further and they've made it their own
in ways that maybe we weren't even expecting, but this it's the Zenith Chronomaster Sport.
The reference number is 03.3100.3600, and it does use the Zenith El Primero movement, which beats at
a higher beat rate than what's used in the Rolex or the omega. It is 36,000 vibrations per hour,
which if you divide that out, it works out to 10 per second, instead of the 8 per second slower
rate that the omega and the Rolex beat at. The reason this is important is that this chronograph
is easy to measure tenths of a second. It's hard on a watch that beats eight times per second
to figure out where the tenths would be exactly. And Zenith has made it even better on the
ceramic bezel instead of it being a traditional tachymeter scale
that measures units per hour. Could be miles per hour, kilometers per hour, widgets per
hour in your factory, or pages per hour, that you're writing for your all-nighter term paper.
Instead, it's measuring tenths of a second. So when I start the chronograph here,
you'll see the chronograph hand goes really fast because at any moment around the dial,
when I press stop, you can read the tenths of a second. So this is at, you know, two tenths past,
and it makes it so much easier than if you were trying to read tenths of a second on a traditional
chronograph. So that's fascinating. It's an interesting difference between this watch and
the Rolex. Another is that even though when you're looking straight at it, it looks a lot like the
Daytona. When you look at it from the side and you look at the taper of the lugs and the finishing of
the lugs, it definitely looks more like a Zenith. It really takes its design cues from the heritage
of the Zenith. One thing that I like about it is that the pushers and the crown don't screw down.
So where on the Rolex, you have to really fiddle with a lot of things before you can mess with your
watch. On the Zenith, that's ready to go all the time. You just want to time something, reach down,
click, and you're on that pusher and it's started. No nothing to unscrew, but it is still
water-resistant to 60 meters. So it's respectable, even though it doesn't have screw-down anything.
And when you look at the caseback, they've really outdone themselves here because
not only does it have an exhibition caseback, but the movement itself is really beautiful.
It's got the rotor is skeletonized so that you can see more of the movement
and it's a column-wheel chronograph. So there are really a lot of interesting things to see there.
So this would definitely get my vote. It is a watch that sits nicely on the wrist.
It's not overbearing in its scale, and it certainly is enough different from the Rolex that
a lot there to see that's different. Of course, you've got that three different colored sub-dials
on this one, there's sort of a black, a gray, and sort of silver against a white dial. It's also
sort of a design motif with Zenith that their sub-dials overlap whereas on the Rolex they're
very clearly completely separated. So it makes the sub-dials a lot bigger and easier to read
on the Zenith. So a lot to like there really a great watch. Then we come over here to the omega.
Now, Omega has never been accused of making their reference numbers easy to remember,
or the names of their watches for that matter easy to remember this one's a mouthful.
It's the Omega Speedmaster Racing Co-Axial Master Chronometer Chronograph 44.25-millimeter.
That's the name of the watch on Omega's website. The reference number is 329.30 44.51.04.001.
And if you look up that there's decoding websites where you can see what all those numbers mean.
The most important pro-tip for you here searching our website. The third number is the diameter of
the watch. So this one's a 44, and you can see it's quite a bit bigger than the Rolex Daytona. So
if you like the idea of the Rolex sports watches, but you like their bigger ones, like a Deepsea
or a Sky-Dweller, this Omega Speedmaster might be a better fit for your wrist. I don't have
particularly big wrists, but maybe I'm delusional. You can let me know, but I think that it looks
good. I love this size 44-millimeter to me is kind of my maximum, but I think it looks fantastic.
Now the dial on this one is sort of a grain silver finish, and then the sub-dials are
really separated at 9 and 3. The other feature you've got on this watch is the date at 6 o'clock,
which the Daytona doesn't have the date at all, by the way, on the Zenith, that's at 4:30, that's
another kind of a Zenith design standard. This one, the ceramic bezel is the tachymeter scale.
Again like the Zenith, it's ready to go all the time. The pushers have a really good feel on this
Omega. You can really feel them, you know, they're kind of like pump-action and you can really feel
them actuate. And again, water-resistant to 60 meters without anything screwing down.
Very convenient. Plus the fact that it is magnetic resistant to 15,000 gausses already.
And then again, similar to the Zenith, it has the exhibition, caseback.
This one the plates and the rotor and everything are engraved heavily.
It's an absolutely gorgeous movement. They call it Côtes de Genève and Arabesque. So they are
regular Côtes de Genève waves of Geneva. But instead of being straight lines, they're curved
like a seashell sort of, and it's a double-barrel movement. So it has a long power reserve
and it is METAS-certified. So it's a much higher level than
the standard chronometer certification that the Rolex goes through. But I think that the overall
aesthetic, you really could go with either one. The one thing about the Omega Speedmaster that a
lot of people either like or hate is that the case is a little bit asymmetrical because the
case acts as crown guards on the right side, and then it doesn't have that large side
on the left side. You might not even notice it once it's on your wrist though.
That's the way I feel about it. So either one of these, again, a quarter to a fifth of the price of
the Rolex. Who knows the Rolex might be a better investment or the others might end up going up.
I wish I had that crystal ball and could let you know. But what I do know is that for the average
Joe, the Rolex Daytona has gotten to the point that it's out of reach for a lot of people that
would like to have a watch that looks like that. And so here, we're giving you a couple of options.
Give us a call. We'll be happy to discuss what we have in stock. If you just search on our website,
ceramic chronograph, you'll see a lot of different options. There are some Omega Seamasters as well
that have ceramic bezels and are chronographs that might fit the bill for you. But these two
are the closest that I thought would just point them out for you today.