Watch Review: Glashütte Original Senator Chronograph Panorama Date


Glashutte Original Senator Chronograph Pano DateGlashütte Original’s new Senator Chronograph Panorama Date has an elegant but unconventional look. In this feature we give the watch, and its new in-house chronograph movement, a thorough once-over.

At Baselworld this year, the German brand Glashütte Original introduced a new, in-house, automatic chronograph movement, Caliber 37. The movement debuted in two models, the sporty Seventies Chronograph Panorama Date and the dressy Senator Chronograph Panorama Date. We took the latter, in its rose-gold version, out for a test drive. (The watch also comes in an even dressier platinum case.) The watch has a classic, but in certain details, unconventional, mien. The dial, made of lacquered, grained silver, has a vintage look. It has a handsome, railway-style minutes scale, black Roman numerals, and blued hour and minutes hands. The narrow, stepped bezel on the partly polished and partly satin-finished case forms an attractive frame around these elements.

Glashutte Original Senator Chronograph Pano Date

What’s less traditional about the watch are its subdials and date display. The latter is in the lower half of the dial, in the center of the vertical midline. In most of the brand’s models, the date is at the 2, 3 or 4 o’clock position. GO’s big-date display differs from others on the market because both of its disks are on the same plane. The date window therefore needs no middle bar to conceal the fact that one digit is more deeply recessed than the other. The date takes about 30 minutes to switch and ends almost exactly at midnight. A small button at 10 o’clock on the left side of the case is used to advance the date. The watch comes with a little stylus for push- ing this button. The arrangement of the subdials is also unusual: they sit at 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock, forming a triangle pointing upward. The running-seconds subdial, at 9 o’clock, is itself unorthodox. It looks conventional enough at first glance, but if you look closer you will see a power-reserve display in an arc-shaped aperture between the 49th and 56th seconds. A black-and-white disk rotates slowly beneath this dial. A tapered arc, printed on the dial, points counterclockwise, indicating the direction in which the power-reserve display moves. The display gradually changes from all black when the mainspring is completely wound to white as the spring slackens. This type of power-reserve display was first used in the company’s Caliber 100. The differential gear train is so finely toothed that only a very small space is needed despite the extreme precision of the display.

Glashutte Original Senator Chronograph Pano Date - back

Click here to download the full test article, including complete specs and prices, plus a diagram of the chronograph mechanism — plus more great original photos of the watch by OK-Photography — for only $2.99 from the WatchTime online store.