Introducing: The Nivada Grenchen Chronoking And Chronomasters With Interchangeable Bezels (Live Pics)
What We Know
Nivada Grenchen is no stranger to bringing back vintage concepts. In fact, it’s kind of the brand’s whole thing. With the brand’s modern revival, helmed by Guillaume Laidet, models taken straight from the past like the Chronomaster and Chronoking anchor the lineup, in an endless variation of dials, movements, and colorways. This time around, Guillaume takes inspiration from a very different Nivada creation from the early 1960s – the COLORAMA VI watch, with interchangeable bezels, and applies it to the iconic chronographs from the brand. Three new watches are now available, each accompanied by a kit of five different interchangeable bezels.
The COLOROMA VI
Nivada debuts bi-directional, tool-free, and snap-on bezel kits for this release on three watches – the Chronomaster “Broad Arrow,” Chronomaster “Singer Paul Newman,” and Chronoking Mecaquartz. From a dial perspective, the Chronomaster “Broad Arrow” remains essentially unchanged. This to me is one of the defining models of Nivada’s modern revival, and it makes sense to leave unchanged here for the bezel kit. With the Chronomaster “Broad Arrow,” you get five aluminum bezels: black, blue, green, and red bezels with minute and hour markings, and a dual-color black and red bezel with minute markings in the black portion and city names on the perimeter in the red.
The Chronomaster Broad Arrow.
The other Chronomaster model features a Singer-style dial, with iconic “Paul Newman” subdials, for the first time in a lower-priced entry from the brand. While this model is by no means inexpensive, starting at $1,975, it is a lot cheaper than the Valjoux 23-based limited edition that came in 2021 at $4,900. The dial features a heavily contrasting black and white dial, with subdials, tachymeter ring, hands, and applied indices all in black, and the base of the dial as well as the subdial printing in stark white. It’s a very clean look, with a few accents of red. With this Chronomaster model, despite having a different dial, the same five bezels as the ones with the “Broad Arrow” will be included.
The new “Red and Black” bezel works so well with the Singer-style dial on this Chronomaster.
While Nivada’s modern Chronomasters utilized the manually-winding Sellita SW510 chronograph movement in their mechanical variants, as a part of the new release, these two Chronomasters utilize Landeron 70 manually-winding movements, an homage to a movement supplier of Nivada in the past. The movements will be in full view with the option of sapphire casebacks on these models. The finishing of these movements is, for lack of a better word, fine, but it’s nice to have a choice for the modern version, especially since there are still plenty of solid caseback options on the site. Both the “Broad Arrow” and “Singer Paul Newman” variants come in at 38mm in diameter and a thickness of 13.75mm, starting at $1,975.
Last but certainly not least in the new lineup is a new take on the Chronoking Mecaquartz. The Chronoking Mecaquartz has seen great success in the past year, and this time around Nivada introduces another vintage-inspired dial, with a matte textured finish, a rally-style minute track, and lots of orange. The Chronoking has received the most attention in terms of bezels, as there are in total 10 different options. When ordering this Chronoking, you can choose between two sets of bezels – GMT or tachymeter. Pretty self-explanatory, but the colors are quite interesting. The GMT bezels feature plexiglass inserts and have an outer black ring with city names, engraved with white Super-LumiNova. The inner ring features different colors behind a tachymeter scale: orange, gray, pink, blue, or green. The tachymeter bezels come in solid colors, each with a tachymeter scale, in blue, orange, red, grey, or black.
The Chronoking, just like all of its other Mecaquartz versions, comes in at 38mm in diameter with a 13.4mm thickness. Inside is a VK63 Mecaquartz movement, with a quartz timekeeping element and a mechanical module on top for the chronograph functions. A quirk of the mecaquartz movement, the three o’clock subdial features a fixed 24-hour time indicator. The Chronoking Mecaquartz starts at $579, about $100 more than the standard variant, surely on account of the five interchangeable bezels.
What We Think
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nivada Grenchen embrace the idea of giving the customer what they want through customization. In the past, Nivada has offered customization options for both the Depthmaster and Chronomaster, in a sort of “mix and match” style. For limited windows of time, customers were able to create their own combination of bezels, dials, hands, straps, etc., for these two models. Guillaume seems to lean into the idea that “the customer is always right” with those programs, though there were sure to be some not-so-nice-looking combinations. With these new interchangeable bezels, Guillaume is giving customers a pre-established framework in which they can customize their watch, post-purchase, at will. It’s kind of a cool idea, since the only thing we can usually change up after the fact on a watch is the strap.
With the Chronomaster variants, I’m curious to see how the Landeron 70 movement will perform when compared to the Sellita SW510. The SW510 seems to be the de facto manual chronograph movement in this price range, and up until now, I had zero idea that anything by the name of Landeron still existed. Some Googling shows a company called Landeron Swiss Movements, with a few partners listed. So in other news, I’ve learned that Landeron is back in this new form. The partnership makes sense, given the historical connection, but I’m assuming this is not the Landeron of old, so I guess time will tell to see how these chronograph movements perform. At this price point, I think I would have preferred the peace of mind of a Sellita movement.
For me, the most exciting one of these three is the Chronoking Mecaquartz. I love the highly textured dial, and a key trait among all the Chronoking Mecaquartz variations is the sunken-in subdials, giving the dial even more depth. There are quite a few layers if you look closely at the dial, and all that dimension makes a $579 watch punch way above its weight. The plexiglass GMT bezels are also interesting, since they seem to provide the watch with more visual interest. It’s a situation in which leaning into the busyness works well.
These interchangeable bezels seem like a lot of fun, and Nivada Grenchen has mentioned that additional models are currently under development. I’m sure this also means that eventually, we’ll see Guillaume and company work on bezel-only releases, which will be a great way to give new life to watches collectors already own. It’s a great way to offer another point of customization through accessories, as well as a smart way to keep the conversation going, from brand to customer, about the watch past the time of sale.
The Basics
Brand: Nivada Grenchen
Model: Chronomaster, Chronoking, with interchangeable bezels
Reference Number: 86056M01LO (Broad Arrow); 86054M01LO (Paul Newman Dial); 87042Q01 (Chronoking Mecaquartz)
Diameter: 38mm
Thickness: 13.75mm (manually-wound Chronomasters); 13.4mm (Chronoking Mecaquartz)
Case Material: Steel
Dial Color: Black (Broad Arrow); white (Paul Newman); black (Chronoking)
Indexes: Applied (Paul Newman and Chronoking); printed (Broad Arrow)
Lume: Yes
Water Resistance: 100m
Strap/Bracelet: Various
The Movement
Caliber: Landeron 70 (Chronomasters); VK63 Mecaquartz (Chronoking)
Functions: Hours, minutes, seconds, chronograph, 24-hour indicator (Chronoking only)
Diameter: 30.4mm
Thickness: 7.58mm
Power Reserve: 46 hours
Winding: Manual (Chronomasters)
Frequency: 28,800 vph
Jewels: 32
Pricing & Availability
Price: Chronomasters start at $1,975, Chronoking Mecaquartz starts at $579
Availability: First deliveries start in the beginning of October
Limited Edition: No
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Hodinkee