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. 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.

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