For my fiftieth birthday I got a Sinn 903 St II chronograph (AU $5,600) instead of saving up for several years till I could afford a Breitling Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 (AU $13,890).

(Read my previous post if you want to know why I picked that specific watch and not one of the other mechanical chronographs I’d shortlisted.)

Graphic showing the promotional photos of two wristwatches from two separate brands that look almost identical. Text below these watches reads, “Sinn 903 St II” and “Breitling Navitimer B01 Chronograph 41”.

I made that decision because the latest Sinn 903 series of watches (ie the mark-two models released from 2024 onwards) suit me better than watches from the modern Breitling Navitimer line up (ie the ones that use the B01 movement and were released from 2009 onwards).

This is for three reasons:

Modern tool watch. The Sinn 903 St II watches are proper modern tool watches while current-day Breitling Navitimers have specs that are similar to modern field or dress watches. For my fiftieth birthday I wanted a practical, relatively hard-wearing tool watch and the Sinn 903 fit the bill.
Cost per wear. Breitling Navitimers are blingy and expensive looking, which means I wouldn’t want to wear one all the time. Of course they don’t just look expensive, they are expensive, which means their cost-per-wear is too high for me.
Brand association. Breitling has a fantastic history and the Navitimer is a historic series of watches, but Sinn has its own reputation of building seriously tough tool watches for the modern age. The Sinn 903 mark-two series is also more historically accurate in its design – meaning it looks more like the Navitimer versions I saw advertised, and subsequently fell in love with, in the 1980s. This combination of being historically accurate in terms of design but incredibly modern in terms of manufacture was a win-win for me.

Of course I’m not going to just leave it there :) Let’s talk about each of these reasons in a little more detail so I can explain why the Sinn 903 was the better watch for me.

Modern tool watch for aviators

The Breitling Navitimer was launched in 1952, and if you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that Sinn purchased the Navitimer design from Breitling when the latter went bankrupt in 1979 due to the influx of lower-cost, but much more accurate quartz watches [1]. Sinn also bought Breitling’s Navitimer watch parts and machinery, but not the Navitimer brand name itself.

The rest of Breitling was purchased by Ernest Schneider who, over the 1980s, revised, refreshed, and rebuilt the Breitling brand.

What’s relevant to our discussion is that, from this point forwards, the Navitimer design evolved along two separate paths.

Graphic showing the promotional photos of three wristwatches. Text below these watches reads, “Sinn 903 St II (2024, 41mm case)”; “Breitling Navitimer Mk8 Ref. 806 (1968, 40.2mm case)”; and “Breitling Navitimer B01 Chronograph 41 (2011, 41mm case)”.

Breitling Navitimer: a modern luxury watch

Under Schneider’s leadership, Breitling moved from the tool watch space to the luxury watch space, and so its Navitimers were evolved into luxury watches – starting with the ‘Old Navitimer’ model launched in 1986 which had a gold bracelet option.

Here’s how the these watches evolved at Breitling:

Standard Navitimers dials were simplified, with the time scale – ie the inner-most scale on the original dial – removed to make the dial cleaner.

Graphic showing the cropped promotional photos of two wristwatches along with some annotations. The annotation on one watch reads, “Time scale on the Sinn 903 St II” and this points to said time scale printed on this watch’s dial. The annotation on the second watch reads, “No time scale on the Breitling Navitimer B01 Chronograph 41” and this points to a blank space on the watch dial where the time scale would have been.

Luxury elements were introduced. These included gold cases and bracelets; moon-phase complications; perpetual calendar movements; and collaborative special editions.
Standard-model cases became thinner (13.6mm vs 14.5mm for the 903s) but larger case sizes were now on offer: 43mm and 46mm in diameter, instead of just the 41mm original.
The water resistance rating of these watches, however, was kept at 30m. In the modern era of watchmaking, the only watches with 30-50m of water resistance are dress watches, “everyday” watches, and some lower-end field watches. Modern tool watches like dive, field, and aviation watches have at least 100m of water resistance across pretty much their entire price range.

Sinn 903: a modern tool watch

Sinn, the German watch manufacturer founded in 1961 as an aviation watch brand, has a different ethos, with a focus on “functionality, reliability, and technical prowess”. The 903 series evolved accordingly, while staying true to its 1970s-era design.

Here’s how these watches evolved (or didn’t) at Sinn:

Dials layouts weren’t changed from the 1970s versions (ie all the scales are still there) and cases sizes were kept at 41mm.
Instead of luxury elements being added, the construction of the watch was brought up to modern tool-watch manufacturing standards. The 903 II series, for example, was engineered to have a whopping 200m of water resistance! This is obviously overkill, but it is a very on-brand flex from Sinn.

Tool watch vs luxury watch

Modern Sinn 903s are tool watches, just like they were in the 1970s. Today they’re slightly anachronistic tool watches for the modern day GPS-connected, smartphone-carrying pilot, but they are very much watches that are built to modern tool-watch standards – which is what I was after. [2]

Modern Breitling Navitimers are luxury watches, though they still work as tool watches. I think these watches are fantastic, and I would love to own one, but when you’re after a robust tool watch, this isn’t the watch for you.

Cost per wear calculation

With its complex visual presence and highly-polished case, the Navitimer is a shiny, blingy, and unmistakeably expensive luxury watch. I can totally rock that look, but only on occasion. Shiny, blingy, and unmistakeably expensive isn’t my usual style, so this isn’t something I’d want to wear all the time.

The 903 on the other hand, has a combination satin/polished case (instead of an all-polished case) and that makes it look less blingy. Yes, this is a pretty thick watch – meaning it does have a certain wrist presence – but being a little less eye-catching than a Navitimer means I’m comfortable wearing it more often.

Close-up photo of a man’s wrist, on which he is wearing a mechanical watch. The man is seated at his desk at work. The watch has black dial, cream coloured hands, and three white coloured sub-dials. This watch is a chronograph so it has two pushers on the side that are used to start and reset the chronograph function.

Given all that, the cost-per-wear calculation for a Navitimer just doesn’t add up. And because a new 903 costs 40% of what new Navitimer costs, the cost-per-wear calculation for the 903s does add up.

Does this mean I’ll never buy a luxury watch because of the cost-per-wear factor? Nope. If someone was to give me twenty thousand dollars right now to spend on watches for myself, I’d buy an Omega Speedmaster first…and then I’d go buy the Sinn 903 :) A brand new Navitimer just isn’t the first luxury watch I’d buy. [3]

Brand association trade-off

While the Sinn 903 might not be as refined or historically significant as the Breitling Navitimer, it more than makes up for this by being a robust and understated (though still gorgeous) timepiece that I can see myself wearing all the time.

Meaning, as a tool-watch guy, in a head-to-head comparison, the Sinn 903 series works better for me than the current Navitimer offerings from Breitling.

Also, with its more complicated, more historically-faithful dial layout, the Sinn 903 is closer to the Navitimers I fell in love with when I saw them advertised in glossy magazines in the 1980s. Sinn’s 903s are modernised, beefed-up versions of those older watches, and so they’re the ones I wanted to go with.

Ultimately, what I’m doing is making a brand-association trade-off: a modern, seriously robust tool watch over a modern, luxury tool watch. Both are great; I just wanted the former.

To sum up

When I was presented with the choice of saving up to get a modern Navitimer in the future or to get a Sinn 903 now – a watch that’s an even tool-watch-ier version of a 1970s-era Navitimer – I chose the latter.

Having made my choice and, as the brand new owner of this most fantastic of watches, I have absolutely no regrets :)

Very close-up photo of half of a watch dial of the Sinn 903 St II.

[1] The rest of the world calls this the “quartz revolution” in watchmaking while the Swiss watch industry calls it the “quartz crisis”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[2] If you want a truly modern tool watch for pilots, you should look at getting an aviation-focused Garmin watch, like the D2 Mach 2, D2 Air X15, or MARQ Aviator. Or you should get a Casio G-Shock GRAVITYMASTER from its ‘Master of G: Air’ line of watches.

[3] I might still buy a Breitling in the future, but it’ll be a pre-owned one and it might not be a Navitimer. Also, buying a luxury watch (whether first- or second-hand) is not something I’m even going to think about till I’m in my sixties!