First Impressions: The Breitling Endurance Pro is a highly functional luxury sports watch

With vintage styling somewhat of a trend within the watch industry these days, it is truly a breath of fresh air to see a brand like Breitling taking the risk to create a brand-new collection. Introducing the Breitling Endurance Pro, a watch inspired by a conversation with a member of their own Triathlon Squad, resulting in a sporty, technology-driven piece that has all the finesse you’d expect from a luxury brand. A few weeks before the launch, I managed to get some hands-on time with the watch, and here are my first impressions of the new Breitling Endurance Pro.

To be fair, this new collection did take its inspiration from Breitling’s past. The watch mimics the ethos of the Breitling Sprint, a chronograph from the 1970s that had a pulsometer on the bezel and a relatively light case made of resin. The new Endurance Pro is built upon these principles but with all the advantages modern technology has to offer.

Let’s start with the case. The moment you pick this watch up it becomes obvious that it was built with a non-traditional material. It is warmer to the touch than steel and has a unique marble-like pattern on its matte surface. This is Breitlight. The material is proprietary to Breitling but it isn’t exactly new. I remember seeing it in Baselworld a couple of years ago but nothing substantial came out of it, until now.

 

 

Breitlight was formally patented in 2017 and is made from a composition of materials including carbon, fibre, resin and more. Anyway, the more important bit, is the fact that it is “3.3 times lighter than titanium and 5.8 times lighter than stainless steel, the material is nonmagnetic, thermally stable, and hypoallergenic. It is also highly resistant to scratches, traction, and corrosion.”

 

 

The case is sized a bit larger at 44mm and even with the bigger dial, it can look a bit busy at first glance. The pulsometer is printed on a chapter ring surrounding the dial while the bi-directional bezel has ‘N, S, E and W’ on it. If you didn’t already know, by using the hour hand, the 12 o’clock indicator and the position of the sun, you can find the cardinal directions and the bezel can be better used to mark these directions.

 

 

Instead of going with a mechanical movement Breitling instead decided to go with their SuperQuartz Breitling Caliber 82 movement for the Endurance Pro. Purists might scoff at this but I think it makes sense; a quartz movement does have less moving parts making it more durable when subjected to repeated shocks. One cool thing to note is that the chronograph from the Caliber 82 is accurate to 1/10th of a second and its nice to see the hands on the chronograph counter spinning around as it functions.

Another interesting bit about this movement is that Breitling lists it as a thermo-compensated SuperQuartz. Even though quartz movements are widely known to be very accurate, it is also quite sensitive to temperature and humidity. So to pass the COSC certification as a Chronometer, the SuperQuartz movement has to be insulated against fluctuations in temperature. And as a Chronometer, the accuracy of the Endurance Pro is rated at ± 0.07 seconds per day and at a temperature of 8°C or 38°C the rate of deviation is only ± 0.20 seconds per day. Just as a comparison a mechanical Chronometer movement has a deviation of -4/+6 seconds daily.

 

 

The Endurance Pro collection comes with a few colours, including white, blue, yellow, orange, or red, reflected in the chapter ring. And will be paired with the Breitling Diver Pro rubber strap of the same colour. For those who prefer fabric straps, these will also work quite well with the ECONYL® yarn NATO straps.

 

 

The Breitling Endurance Pro will be available upon launch at an MSRP of MYR 12,980.

Case: Breitlight
Case size: 44mm
Crystal: sapphire, flat, double anti-reflective coating
Thickness: 12.5mm
Movement: Breitling Caliber 82 SuperQuartz
Water Resistance: 100m
Price: MYR 12,980