Hands-On: Chronoswiss Pulse One Titanium Watches
While not the only brand to make regulator-style watch faces, Chronoswiss has made this layout its signature dial style across many products. Regulator dials originated with precision clocks used to regulate other timepieces and have layouts that separate the hours, minutes, and seconds via three separate dials. Chronoswiss has actually been experimenting with a number of decidedly non-regulator watches over the last few years, but it still wants fans to consider the regulator dial something that is associated with the Chronoswiss brand. The new Chronoswiss Pulse One collection is an interesting artistic exercise in maintaining the traditional regulator-style display but paired with a novel and modern-looking dial, case, and integrated bracelet. The Chronoswiss Pulse One watches debuted in two limited-edition styles, each with a matching titanium case and bracelet.
The first thing I noticed about the Chronoswiss Pulse One watches was how interesting and cool the new cases looked. This is easily my favorite part of the Pulse One family, and the good news is that Chronoswiss will continue offering more watches with this new and attractive case. Design-wise, it builds upon some of the classic coined-edge bezels and aviator-style onion crowns used on many older Chronoswiss watches. With that said, the case design is hyper-modern from an architectural perspective and attempts to create a new cohesive look that is not per se looking backwards at traditional watch design archetypes (just traditional Chronoswiss designs that is). The grade 5 titanium cases are 41mm wide, 12.75mm thick, and have a 46.3mm long lug-to-lug distance. The case is water resistant to 100 meters and has a domed and AR-coated sapphire crystal over the dial. My favorite detail on the case is the polished concave part of the crown, which is beautiful and unexpected.
Paired with the case is a new titanium bracelet that is designed to offer an integrated look. I commend Chronoswiss for coming out with something genuinely new-looking that is also comfortable to wear. As is the case with most new watch bracelets (and cases for that matter), brands tend to tweak them over the first few years after their debut, both for aesthetic and comfort purposes (and sometimes to create further manufacturing efficiencies). There are so many ways to polish and play with this bracelet, let alone the case, that I am enthused to see how Chronoswiss plays with their new Pulse One timepiece family in the years to come. These first two models with the sand-colored and blue dials will be produced only as limited editions.
Chronoswiss chose an interesting direction for the dial design, which doubles down on the regulator concept, while really adding nothing else other than more dimensionality and finishing. Despite the pleasantly over-engineered approach to the dial design, what I like about it is that it still wants to look like an instrument. The dial of the Pulse One is where the designer certainly pulled in some historic elements when looking at the style of the markers, hands, and focus on precision reading. The stacked layers of elements, along with the host of fancy finishing, are what give the dial its modern feel.
Unlike traditional regulator dials, the Pulse One has one small difference in the form of the seconds dial layout. Rather than a standard round dial for the second, Chronoswiss decided to create a retrograde seconds dial. This means that the seconds hand moves over a shorter distance and then jumps back to its starting position. It appears that the seconds scale on the dial is only 30 seconds long, which means that the seconds hand must go over it twice each minute. This isn’t per se about precision or what traditional regulators are about, but it does create an interesting dial animation and allows the seconds indicator to be larger than it might otherwise be if it needed its own full circular dial on the Pulse One face.
Powering the Chronoswiss Pulse One watch is again a movement made for them by Swiss La Joux-Perret. The movement is known as the Chronoswiss Caliber C. 6001 automatic, and it operates at 4Hz with 55 hours of power reserve. You can view the wide-diameter movement in its nicely finished form through the rear of the watch’s sapphire crystal caseback.
While attempting to be fashionable and trendy, the Chronoswiss Pulse One is nevertheless a modern-looking watch for a very particular type of timepiece lover. It is for people who are machine and instrument lovers, who enjoy the heritage and playfulness of the face. It is also for people who admire modern design and architecture, without it needing to be overly simplistic or contradictory to past aesthetics. This is, in essence, a thinking person’s watch, but for people who are also first-adopters and appreciate functional machines more so than mere storytelling. The two debut models of the Chronoswiss Pulse One are the reference CH-6823T-BRSI “PULSE One Sand” and the reference CH-6823T-BLSI “PULSE One Blue.” In grade 5 titanium, each of them will be produced as a limited edition of 100 pieces and have a retail price of $13,300 USD. Learn more at the Chronoswiss website.
