Breguet Marine Automatic 3400BA Luxury Watch Review

http://www.thewatchbox.com

As a supplier to the French Navy between 1815 and the 1970s, Breguet is a seafaring marque: this 18-karat yellow gold Breguet Marine Automatic 3400BA pays tribute to the manufacture’s heritage on the rolling waves among men-in-arms.

The Breguet Marine 3400BA unifies the company’s heritage as a luxury benchmark and its history as a significant military contractor on par with Officine Panerai, Rolex, and IWC. Without sacrificing traditional Breguet traits of restrained detail and classical lines, the Breguet Marine offers sports watch-levels of versatility and dress watch prowess when paired with formal attire.

Tradition figures with prominence: a silvered dial with hand-guided guilloche and bold black Roman numerals lies below three traditional "Breguet" hands (even parts of watches are named for The Man behind the brand).

The Breguet Marine case incorporates essential Breguet design features including welded lugs, secure screw-fixed strap bars, and cold-rolled coining. The last feature is both expensive and time-consuming to apply, especially given the amount of hand-finishing that follows the initial cold-roll. But the gleaming and perfectly-formed result is worth the trouble.

Inside the Breguet Marine beats a Breguet caliber 549; it's an immaculately finished movement from manufacture par excellence Jaeger-LeCoultre of Le Sentier. As an historic supplier of premium movements to the likes of Breguet, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, and Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre is to movements what Ferrari is to engines.

The Breguet Cal. 549 nee-JLC 889 is a thin bi-directional winder with a smooth and refined rotor action; it’s hard to notice on the wrist. Hacking seconds (stop seconds) permits precise synchronization to a reference time such as an atomic clock, and the movement can be adjusted to rival COSC chronometers for absolute precision.

This Breguet Marine Automatic 3400BA is available from thewatchbox.com with full Breguet factory boxes, manuals, and documents of provenance. See it in high-resolution images on www.thewatchbox.com Video and content by Tim Mosso.