Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue Watch Review
Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue was unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2024. A new addition to the hugely successful Alpine Eagle collection, first launched in 2019, this latest model (Ref. 298609-3008) is housed in Grade 5 titanium and sports a handsome Rhone Blue dial. Mark McArthur-Christie, a man with a penchant for chronographs, waxes lyrical about column-wheels, vertical couplings, chronometers and tachymeter scales.
Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue – Grade 5 titanium case
If ever a watch makes sense in titanium, it’s Chopard’s Alpine Eagle XL Chrono. So far we’ve had XL Chronos in gold and the firm’s own Lucent Steel, but titanium has been missing from the lineup. The watch measures 44 mm in diameter and has a height of 13.15 mm. It’s no hockey puck, but you’ll know you’re wearing it, even if it is very comfortable. Encasing it in Grade 5 titanium makes a great deal of sense, especially as Chopard has replaced the bracelet with a new rubber strap. There’s also something fitting about a watch named after a bird being as light as possible. And the firm says it’s “…so light that one could easily forget the watch is actually on the wrist.” The Lucent steel pushers and crown won’t add too much weight.
Chopard Alpine Eagle – inspired by the St. Moritz
If you don’t know the story, the Alpine Eagle is the now fully-fledged offspring of a watch called the St. Moritz from 1980. Things were just as uncertain in Watchworld then as they are today but for very different, quartz-shaped reasons. The St. Moritz was developed by Chopard’s 22-year-old Karl-Friederich Scheufele. At the time, Chopard was making some beauties, but none were endowed with the St.Moritz’s clean, unadorned stainless steel case. They didn’t have the six-screwed bezel either, with the fixings set into what looked like reinforcement points. Karl-Frederich managed to persuade his father (who was running the business at the time) that this new watch was a good idea. It went into production and, sure enough, the watch flew, becoming a fixture in the Chopard lineup.
Fast forward several years and Karl-Fritz, Karl-Friederich’s son, persuaded his father that the new Alpine Eagle would be a good idea after seeing a St. Moritz in his office. Take a look at a St. Moritz and the genetics are sapphire crystal clear. (See articles about the Alpine Eagle’s habillage and movement)
Chopard 03.05-C movement
But, as Ms Trainor might say, it’s not all about that case. The Chopard 03.05-C movement is a serious bit of kit. It’s an in-house (developed and assembled) 310 part, 45 jewel, automatic column-wheel chronograph that runs at 28,800 vph (or 4 Hz) and will keep doing so on a full wind for 60 hours.
Column wheels are cool, sure, but what really smooths out the operation of the pushers and steps the second hand off accurately is a vertical clutch. This movement’s vertical clutch is patented. And this isn’t just a chronograph, it’s a flyback. Here, the flyback system uses three pivoting hammers with elastic (as in their behaviour rather than their composition) arms, making the reset smarter and easier. The flyback system also carries its own patent. Then there’s the winding mechanism with a unidirectional gear drive system. It’s designed to get as much power to the mainspring without getting lost along the way and, at the same time, make auto winding speedy. And, you guessed it, it’s patented too. If the cal. 03.05-C was a computer, you’d call it Hal, but with a great deal less attitude.
The movement hacks too, and it’s not a huge surprise that it’s chronometer-certified by the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute. One imagines that was something of a walk in the park.
Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue – Grade 5 titanium dial
But a chronograph, no matter how remarkable, is only as good as the dial it serves.
At a quick look, this one seems to be a relatively standard blue brushed sunburst, but it’s worth a much closer look. For a start, that’s not sunburst, the graining is far deeper and intended to evoke the iris of an eagle’s eye. That’s because the dial’s brass disc is stamped before it gets a coating of PVD. And that blue is ‘Rhône Blue’, intended to mirror the colours of the Rhône itself.
The chrono functions are picked out in snailed black subdials. You get a 30-minute counter at 3 o’clock, with the hand making semi-instantaneous jumps, a 12-hour counter at 9 o’clock and a small running seconds at 6. The chrono seconds hand has a red, arrow-shaped tip (neatly matching the 100, 160 and 240 graduations on the inner bezel ring) with a fletched counterweight. Each of those graduated areas is divided into four steps, with different intervals of 5, 10, 20 or 40 km/h per line. This makes reading average speed a cinch, especially under the glareproof sapphire crystal. It’s good to see a chronograph dial function that’s been so thoroughly designed, even down to the linking red infill on the chrono hours and minutes hands.
Things are just as clear in low light as they are in full daylight, partly down to the contrasting subdials and partly because of the Grade XI Super-LumiNova coating gracing the hands and hour markers.
Finally, the date window is dropped in between four and five with the date disc using the same Rhône blue as the dial. White just wouldn’t have worked with a dial colour this rich.
Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue – rubber strap
If you know your Chopards, you’ll not be surprised that the XL comes on a rubber strap rather than a bracelet. After all, the firm has had quite the tradition of these since 1995 – look at the beauty on the Mille Miglia that replicates a 1960s tyre tread pattern. Rubber makes sense for a watch like the XL Chrono – it’s water-resistant, bendy and thoroughly comfortable.
It’s not just been a case of ‘ditch the bracelet and slap on a strap’, though. The Chopard workshops have preserved the metal link bracelet’s design by echoing its taper and raised central cap in rubber. And, of course, there’s a titanium pin buckle to go along with it.
Alpine Eagle Foundation – do some good by buying a watch
It’s not always the case that you can do some good by buying a watch, but you can here. Chopard will be donating part of the profits from the XL Chrono’s sales to the Alpine Eagle Foundation. Set up by Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele in 2020, The Foundation’s projects aim to raise awareness and get people to take action on behalf of the entire Alpine region and the life it shelters.
Further reading
Technical specification
- Model: Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono Rhone Blue
- Reference: 298609-3008
- Case: Grade 5 titanium, diameter 44 mm, height 13.15 mm, water resistance 10 ATM (100m), sapphire crystal to front and exhibition case back
- Functions: hours, minutes, centre chronograph seconds hand, small seconds, date, stop seconds, flyback chronograph, tachymeter
- Movement: Chopard 03.05-C, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 45 jewels, power reserve 60 hours, certified chronometer (COSC)
- Bracelet: Black rubber strap with titanium insert paired with pin buckle in titanium
- Price on application. Chopard Boutique exclusive.