REVIEW: Hands On With The Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton

For LVMH Watch Week, Zenith adds to their Defy Skyline collection, taking their Defy Skyline Chronograph and giving it the skeleton treatment. And it’s good!

What We Love

The skeleton dial looks stunning, especially in blue
It has a great wrist presence
Quick change strap and bracelet makes it easy to change looks

What We Don’t

No date! But I can maybe overlook that.
Bracelet has no micro-adjust, so a perfect fit isn’t as easy to achieve
The lume could be brighter on the hands and indices

Overall Score: 8.9 / 10

Value for Money: 9/10
Wearability: 8.5/10
Design: 9/10
Build Quality: 9/10

For those of you who are familiar with Zenith’s defy skyline range the new Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton will be a watch that has come at no surprise for you. It’s the natural evolution of the Defy Skyline range as we saw last year with the Defy Skyline Skeleton coming out and then the Defy Skyline Chronograph. This new model does justice to both of those models in a fusion that works wonderfully well.

First Impressions

With two variants in blue and black, these feel like a natural extension of the Defy Skyline Chronograph I’ve just mentioned, which made their debut at Watches & Wonders 2024. The watch has all the hallmarks of and the Defy design DNA, and for those who love this style and design direction that Zenith is going in will love these models as well. These new watches are missing the date however, so if you’re like and love a date on a dial, then you may not love these. However, as I’ll go into later, I may be able to overlook this thanks to the way the dial is designed.

The two new Zentih Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeletons kindly being modelled by our resident guru, Champs

The four pointed Zenith star acts as the skeleton architecture on the dial, and I feel the blue colour here works the best as it brings the dial to life more. Plus, who doesn’t love a blue watch?! The subdials act as a great contrast to the skeleton dial, as does the indices which seamlessly float above it. Having this piece on my wrist is somewhat familiar having reviewed the Defy Skyline Chronograph collection last year, and also owning one of the original blue dial Defy Skylines that came out in 2022, it feels like there is an old friend on my wrist again – only this time with an edgier look!

The Design

As mentioned, this is pure Zenith Defy through and through with the added addition of the Skyline styling to the watch. Now I am not going to go into too much detail on all the standard design elements as I am pretty sure I’ve covered that extensively in our articles on the Defy Skyline Chronographs from last year as well as my Owners Perspective article on the Defy Skyline, plus the myriad of other articles relating to the Defy Skyline (here). However, what I am going to talk about on this piece is the dial as this is really the hero of this new lineup.

Zenith has taken the four point star, which is now synonymous with the brand, especially the Defy Skyline range where you find the stars on the dials and also in raised motifs on the rubber straps, but here it acts perfectly as the architecture for the skeletonisation on the dial. The blue is subtle enough to blend in, but when compared to the black, it stands out, especially in the sun with the burshing coming to life. Given it’s a chronograph, Zenith have opted to put their three overlapping subdials, similar to what you will find on the Chronomaster Sport at 3, 6 and 9 o’clock, but in this instance, the dials have the outer tracks in silver and a hollowed in the middle to show more of the El Primero movement underneath.

The blue brushed skeleton dial comes alive in daylight, and contrasted by the silver subdial tracks, it gives the Defy Skyline Chronograph a whole new look!

Because of the 1/10 of a second echograph with the main hand tracking the 10th of a second, the dial at 3 o’clock allows you to measure the seconds and the dial at 6 o’clock gives you the minutes over a 60 minute time period. And you have a standard Small seconds dial at nine, which allows you to set the reference time accurately with hacking seconds. This is where the Defy Skyline Chronographs have the edge over the time only. Each subdial is hollowed with a circular grained outer that makes these pop on both the blue and black dial variant. In fact, I feel that these help to complete the dial.

Circular grained and hollowed, the subdials allow more light in as well as more of the movement on show.

However, I will say this. As this is a 1/10 of a second chronograph, I was a little surprised to find the outer track of the dial just next to the rehaut is a little hard to read the 1/10 of a second timing given the scale and the design of it. You can tell the timing to 1/10 of a second if you look closely, but it is not designed to be at a glance. The cool thing that Zenith have done on this out of track however, is aligned the angles to the dodecagon bezel, meaning it’s just not fully circular. It’s a small but kind of cool design element that have included here.

Up close, the 1/10th second register is ok, but at a glance, you do find it a little hard to decipher the exact elapsed time, but, the it is a cool design mirroring the dodecagonal bezel shape.

Keeping on the theme of the dail, because of the way the movement and dial is designed you get the sense of skeletonization, but only on the dial, but as the movement isn’t skeletonized itself. This means you’re not going to get that full effect of a pure skeleton watch. In saying this, you are also not paying the price of a fully skeletonized movement either, so there are pros and cons here. Outside of the dial, Zenith has stuck to the Defy Skyline design codes I mentioned earlier, effectively mirroring it’s predecessor Chronograph. The angular features, vertically brushed and polished chamfered bezel,

The polished sides on the bezel and vertically brushed case are all part of the Skyline DNA

The Defy Skyline Chronograph retains the same bracelet and strap system as all other models, with the quick change button on the underside of the case to swap out the bracelet and strap. Personally, I love the strap on these as it just makes them a little more sporty and the design of the strap suits the watch so well with the 4 point star relief and bolstering.

The quick change mechanism is one of the easiest to use on the market, but it is proprietary, so you are locked into Zenith for strap choices. However, you most probably won’t want to look elsewhere if you’re like me as they’ve got it down pat.

Overall, the design is emblematic of the Zenith Defy Skyline, just amped up with the chronograph and skeleton dial that does give it some major wrist presence when wearing it…

How it wears

Personally, I love the way these pieces wear and feel on the wrist. Sometimes I feel the time only is on the smaller side, which at 41mm sounds strange, but the way I perceive it, especially on the rubber strap is smaller and less presence. I wrote in my review of the Defy Skyline Chronograph that the slightly larger 42mm sized, along with the chronograph pushers actually felt better to me on my wrist, and this is the same sentiment I have now with the skeleton dial version. On my 17.5cm wrist, it just feels better and more balanced (at least to me), and as I said also last year in that review, these are watches you need to try on to get a good idea of how they wear on both the bracelet and the strap.

Dressed up or down, the 42mm Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton on my 17.5cm wrist and for a comparison, on Champs’ 165cm wrist. Both ways, it still still nicely and doesn’t feel overbearing.

Part of the reason these well pretty well is the case design and little to no lugs essentially. With a 48mm lug-to-lug and only being a surprising 12.5mm thick, these are not big watches, and with the case design having multiple facets and angles and an integrated strap, these do seem to wear smaller than the paper numbers suggest. Had the watch had more slab sides, larger lugs and a thicker case to accomodate the movement (compared to the segmented bezel design instead) the Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton would feel larger on the wrist.

Looking at the Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton from a third person perspective you can see a true representation of how the watch wears on my wrist. Still plenty of space either side of the case across the wrist.

Depending on your preference, the watch will look and feel different depending on being worn on the rubber strap or steel bracelet. Both give off a different vibe all together and both do wear slightly differently comfort wise as well. With the strap, you can easily adjust it as Zenith utilises a push button clasp as well as a pin buckle style system so it’s easy to take off at the push of the button, or if you want the get the strap tighter, you can adjust it via the buckle.

The folding push button clasp and pin buckle all in one make it easy for lengthening or tightening the strap.

However, on the steel bracelet, you will need to size it to your wrist as there is no micro adjust with the double folding clasp. So if you’re like me and have a wrist that can change 5-10mm in size based on the weather, then this could potentially bother you. Also, Zenith uses double screws on the bracelet links, so to adjust the links at home, you will need the right gear to do so.

As much as you can’t really alter the bracelet size, it does look good on it, and the vertical brushing flows through fro the case to the bracelet and gives the watch a new look on the wrist.

From a visibility perspective, the Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton is easy to read in the day. With many skeleton dials on the market, some brands and watches have the issue of being hard to read due to the dial design. There is no issue with this though, as the rhodium coated hands and indices beautifully contrast with the darker dials. In the dark, there is enough Super-LumiNova to see the time, but compared to other watches on the market, the glow isn’t as bright or as prominent for low light reading as Zenith uses the C1 SLN, which is about 31% as bright as C3. This is something across all the Defy Skyline models and not unique to the Chronograph Skeleton. Other brands depending on the watches intended use will use a Super-LumiNova at the higher end of the SLN spectrum, such as C3, C5, light blue or light green.

One way I test the lume on the watch, other than wearing it at night, is to charge it in the sun, and then walk inside with some blinds shut to see how it glows in low light conditions.

The movement

Inside the Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton is Zenith El Primero, 3600SK Movement, which is a more skeletonized adaptation of the El Primero 3600 movement found in the chronograph range. On this model, you have a blued star as the main rotor, (black on the black dial model) which is also skeletonised and this shows off the movement architecture beautifully, allows you to see the gears and wheels turning, as well as the balance wheel beating away at 10:30 through both the front and back. I would have liked to have seen the balance more on display via the front of the dial, however, due to the design of the movement and the dial skeletonisation this possibly would’ve been hard to achieve given the way the Star dial is designed on the front, but I’m nitpicking here.

The specially designed El Primero 3600SK calibre with a more open architecture to allow the blue of the dial and mainplate to show through. The oscillating rotor in the shape of the Zenith star is also skeletonised to assist with the visibility of the movement.

Operating the chronograph on this piece is pretty seamless, and from memory it feels slightly better than the standard Defy Skyline Chronograph. The pushers have a crispness to them that is smooth, but tactile at the same time, and thanks to column wheel and cam system it starts, stops and resets seamlessly. Once started, you get to see the 1/10th of a second hand spin around the dial every 10 seconds, which may not be all that useful every day, but is a super cool party trick and something I entertained my 3 year old for a while with!

The chronograph pushers are crisp yet smooth, and somehow remind me of the Hublot Unico Flyback movement. Perhaps there are some shared learnings across the two sister brands…

Changing the time is easy enough due to the screwing crown, which has not ostensibly changed across any of the Defy Skyline range. The crown stem on the models that I reviewed does have some given it when you are changing the time, but as long as you are aware of that when making you change, you’ll be able to get it accurate enough. Again something that I look for these days when looking at movements to see how tight the stem is with regards to the ratchet wheel and movement.

The screw down crown is a great addition to the Defy Skyline range, making these a great all round sports watch.

Final Thoughts

The addition of the skeleton to the Defy Skyline Chronograph is, in my opinion, the perfect next evolution for this collection. It takes what is a cool looking industrial design of the Defy Skyline, beefs it up slightly through the chronograph, and then gives it the additional edge in this with the skeleton dial and the hollowed out subdials in silver. When we had the Defy Skyline Chronograph collection last year, I found myself thinking these fitted and suited me better than my standard Defy Skyline. At that time, I gravitated more towards the white dial with the green rubber strap, purely for the fact that I thought it just looked great, the white dial absorbed the light beautifully and gave it that crisp finish. Plus, I loved the tone of green on the rubber strap. However, picking up these new chronographs with the skeleton dials, I find myself now rethinking that these could possibly be one step better than the standard Defy Skyline Chronographs.

Whilst it doesn’t have a date function on it, which for those who have read my articles over the last few years, this is somewhat of a sticking point for me, I can’t help but feel with the look and overall aesthetics of these pieces I can overcome or overlook this omission. At the end of the day, the design doesn’t lend itself to having a date window and would potentially ruin the dial aesthetics and balance.

In terms of the colour choice, black or blue, this is a personal preference really. But for me, I’m a sucker for a blue watch and something that has a little bit of colour to it, so wearing it on the blue rubber strap with the blue dial, I found that was my go to out of the duo.

Quick changing out the strap for the bracelet is seamless as always with Zenith’s quick change system, and while I do like the bracelet with the brushed finish, for me, I feel the strap is what makes these pieces. I’m talking about from both a comfort and wearability perspective, but also helping compliment the dial and contrasting with the brushed steel case. For me it just gives these watches a more sporty look and I feel like this is the perfect compliment to the watch, especially for those with a more active and outdoors lifestyle, or like us who live in a warmer part of the country.

My overall wearing experience with Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton has been great, to the point that it did make me feel I need this more in my life than my current OG Skyline. Zenith has taken this to the next level here, and brought out a great looking piece that has some serious horological chops, not to mention a watch that will most probably turn heads!

References:

Blue – 03.9500.3600/79.I001
Black – 03.9500.3600/78.I001

Specifications:

Case: 42mm, 48mm lug-to-lug and 12.5mm thick
Case Material: Brushed and Polished Steel
Case back: Steel screw-down with sapphire display back
Dial: Black or blue brush finished openworked dial with silver subdial displays, rohodium plated hands and indices with Super-LumiNova.
Crystal: Sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating
Water resistance: 100 Metres (10BAR) with Screw-Down Crown
Movement: El Primero 3600SK high-frequency (5Hz) automatic movement with 1/10th second chronograph function
Power reserve: 60 Hours
Strap/Bracelet: Integrated steel bracelet with interchangeable matching blue or black rubber via the quick change system.