The Breitling Endurance Pro 38 Is the Perfect Watch for the Serious Athlete

Much as we watch nerds tout the benefits of mechanical (and particularly automatic) movements — you never have to worry about a dead battery, etc. — the truth is that a well-built, inexpensive quartz movement will generally dance circles around a mechanical counterpart with respect to accuracy. This is doubly true of a technology such as Breitling’s thermo-compensated SuperQuartz, which the brand says is 10 times more accurate than your average, run-of-the-mill battery-powered movement. Combine this with a durable case, a useful timing complication, an excellent feature set and attractive colors, and you’ve got a recipe for a watch that the masses would be genuinely delighted to strap on.

Such is the case with Breitling’s freshly shrunken Endurance Pro 38. Previously only available in a 44mm case, it now comes in a lovely, sub-40mm style perfect for wrists of all sizes. (And don’t worry — the brand also retained the 44mm version, offering it with a newly redesigned rubber strap in navy, orange, white and light blue.) Breitling, famous over the past 30 or so years for its positively enormous watches, seems to be taking the horological zeitgeist seriously by making certain models available in universally appealing diameters, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Furthermore, given its SuperQuartz innards, the Endurance Pro 38 is priced at $3,250 — a number that, while still firmly within the luxury sphere, is significantly more attainable than much of the marque’s mechanical offerings.

Enough to pique your interest? Us, too. But the Endurance Pro 38 is no slouch — on the contrary, it’s filled with compelling features that describe a watch much more expensive than its sub-$5,000 price point would suggest. First up is the case: Made of a material called Breitlight, it’s five times lighter than stainless steel, and three times lighter than titanium. (It’s also hypoallergenic, nonmagnetic, scratch and corrosion resistant and more.) And while each of the five available colorways features a black dial with a triple-register chronograph, applied Arabic indices, a 4:30 date window and lumed sword hands, the rehaut beneath the outer pulsometer scale is color-coordinated to the crown, pusher rings and strap colors in purple, pink, white, light blue or red.

By retaining a largely black dial and using only subtle pops of color, the Endurance Pro 38 feels slightly irreverent while maintaining an otherwise serious demeanor, made even more prominent by the pulsometer scale (for taking a pulse), bidirectional compass bezel, 100m of water resistance, highly accurate movement and chronograph features. In other words: This is a serious athletic watch that’s meant to be used and abused, and if the rubber strap with Breitling tang buckle happens to be colorful rather than black and tactical looking, well, it doesn’t remotely detract from the watch’s qualifications. Measuring 12.1mm thick and weighing just 53.6 grams including the strap, the Endurance Pro 38 is a step in a highly welcome direction for Breitling.

My father bought a black PVD-coated, quartz-powered Breitling Colt in NYC in the 1980s following a recommendation from a fellow paratrooper and wore it on parachute jumps for years. Given the brand’s proclivity for positively huge watches, I wasn’t sure I’d be seeing anything lightweight, serious and sub-40mm like this for quite some time. And yet here we are! Now if I can just convince Mr. Kern to make a black rubber strap with Morse Code on the back like the one that came on my dad’s watch…