Hands-On: Delma Montego Black Edition DLC Chronograph Watch
Photos by Sean Lorentzen
Swiss Delma recently updated its long-standing racing-inspired Montego timepiece collection with a new series known as the Delma Montego Black Edition. The Montego Black Edition, so far, comes in three color variations. Each has the same black DLC-coated steel case but with dial color accents in either the pictured blue or yellow, and an additional version (not pictured in this article) with red accents. The Montego, overall, and the Montego Black Edition, specifically, are old-school-style Swiss chronograph sports watches with a beefy, masculine personality and a focus on utility.
Products similar to the Delma Montego Black Edition have been on the market for more than 30 years. What I mean by that are larger, sporty, and conservative chronograph sports watches, most of which were fueled by the availability of the popular and dependable Swiss Made ETA Valjoux 7750 automatic chronograph movement. When ETA stopped making the Valjoux 7750 movement widely available to third parties, watches on the market like this dipped tremendously. Now, it looks like similar products might be on the rebound thanks to the greater availability of the also Swiss Made Sellita SW500 automatic chronograph movement. Originally, the SW500 was more or less a clone of the Valjoux 7750. Since then, I believe Sellita has made some minor changes to the movement (such as the increased power reserve), but overall, the SW500 is designed to fit in places where a Valjoux 7750 movement might have once been. The movements are the same size and feature the same indicators, including the time, day/date calendar complication, and a 12-hour chronograph. The SW500 movement operates at 4Hz with 62 hours of power reserve and can be viewed through the sapphire crystal case display.
For some people, the downside of the SW500 / Valjoux 7750 movement family is the mechanism’s size. Accordingly, watches equipped with these mechanisms tend to be on the heftier side, but that is totally fine for many watch wearers. That said, it is true that the mechanical watch market is in sore need of a more budget-friendly and smaller-sized high-performance chronograph movement. The Delma Montego Black Edition case is 42mm wide and 16.2mm thick with a box-style sapphire crystal. The case is water resistant to 200 meters with a screw-down crown and chronograph pushers. The DLC coating offers a black color option, along with scratch resistance. That is a major reason many people like having watches with diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings.
Design-wise, the Montego builds on the long legacy of watches such as the Rolex Daytona – which is the general rubric that watches like this and others adopt when designing retro-style racing sport watches. The fixed black bezel has a bright white tachymeter scale printed on it, while the dial has equally high-contrast indicators and markers. The dial is a bit on the busy side (as many sport chronographs are), but you can easily read the time via the larger hands and hour markers. Both are also painted with a fair amount of Super-LumiNova luminous material for darkness viewing. While Delma could have just offered a black and white dial for the Montego Black Edition, I think it was smart for the company to offer dashes of color in the form of the three variations of the watch that are currently available.
Attached to the 42mm-wide case is a matching black DLC-coated steel bracelet that has a Rolex Jubilee style to it. While the design is somewhat generic at this point, such bracelets are comfortable and trendy. The bracelet closes with a fold-over locking deployant clasp. There are no straps that comes with the Montego Black Edition, but the standard natural steel versions of the Delma Montego come on either steel bracelets or an assortment of strap options. These might be better choices for those people who want a lighter weight wearing experience, or who don’t want to pay the premium for the black DLC-coating on the Montego Black Edition pieces. Delma charges a $525 USD premium for the Montego Black Edition over the non DLC-coated variants. Price for the Delma Montego Black Edition watch (all versions) is $3,450 USD. Learn more at the Delma watches website.
