Does anything about this watch look familiar? It should if you follow Zenith watches at all. This is Gc’s rendition of the Zenith Defy X-treme watches. Frankly, I think the Gc does it a bit better, especially on the price side. I am sorry, the Zenith Defy X-treme watches are cool, but so NOT $20,000 grand plus cool. Those are just a long toss into depreciation alley. While the Gc Sport Class XL watch is not without its issues (starting with the name), it is a nice looking watch, and I’d be proud to sport it.
Gc (Guess Collection) is the Guess company’s watch brand. Though when I look at the name I always think Gucci. Guess as a company has had better days, but I hope that they continue to invest in their watch brand as they have some… interesting stuff to say the least. For example, the Swiss quartz movement has a 12 hour chronograph that has been incorporated into two subdials. The minutes subdial also has a smaller subdial inside of it for the hours. It is not the clearest to read, but the functionality is still there. You don’t see dials within dials on too many quartz watches. Neat that Gc chose to use this movement. It also have a big date complication. Gc placed a tachymeter scale on the side of the watch. You could technically use it, but no one is. For that reason it is just there to be cosmetic. Which is to be expected with… most every tachymeter scale (ever put on a watch, ever).
The steel cases watch is 46mm wide and 100 meters water resistant with a screw down crown. The rose gold color is PVD applied, which is pretty decent. The case has some brushed and polished sections which is nice, and I really like how they integrated the polished chronograph pushers. Hopefully a watch like this has a little sparkle to it when you wear it around. The bracelet is where you see a lot of the Defy X-treme influence (and just normal Defy line). The gold colored center link has that “file” look of textured metal that came from machinery originally. In watch terms the pattern is called “Clos du Paris,” but this is not quite what watch makers had in mind when they named the guilloche pattern. With polished steel links on the side. Looks like the bracelet is tapered a bit, which is nice. There are also versions of the watch that employ titanium… at least in the bracelet.
With a curved chapter ring and applied indexes, the dial of the watch looks deep and functional. A good fashion dial if you ask me that doesn’t offend by having too much superfluousness or confusion illegible parts. The hands could have a bit more of a contrasted look, but maybe now I am just getting picky. Good thing that Gc applied the dial with lots of SuperLumiNova on the hands and hour markers. The rotating diver’s bezel completes that look and is another shout out to the style of the Zenith Defy X-treme.
This is one of Gc’s newer watches and is not super easy to find. But you can find it, and it carries a retail price of about $700.
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