Zenith Elite 681 Watch Shows Bland New Brand Identity

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
Jan 22nd 2010 at 12:02PM

Have you ever noticed that a lot of vintage watches look alike. There are like two decades in the 20th century where 90% of the watch looked the same. Just different brands and minor differences. The last decade proved that each watch brand could be unique with lots of interesting and distinctive designs. Sadly, with a new push toward "traditional" styles comes that traditional problem of boring look-alike watches. Not that such designs are inherently boring, but that enough brands have them, so the overall theme makes you want to yawn.

Zenith has had a couple of tough years, and there was a lot of promise with their new CEO Jean-Frederic Dufour. We knew that Zenith was going "back to its roots," but why does it have to be like this? One of their "exciting" new releases is the Elite 681 Ultra-Thin watch. It looks almost identical to other watch brand's retro-esque ultra thin watches. Sure, the 40mm wide gold watch that is about 3.8mm thick and has an automatic movement is decent looking, but just decent looking. Feels like your typical "grandpa watch special" and too much like other brands who are releasing doppelganger watches, and do the style better. So Zenith, you are telling me that your new identity is to be like Vacheron Constantin? Nice watch, yawn-worthy design. Another squatter on the already too full retro bandwagon. I was just sort of expecting more from them. We will see what else Zenith has in store for us soon.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: 2010, 681, automatic, elite, watch, zenith