Since its introduction in 1938, the Oris Big Crown Pointer Date pilot’s watch has had two distinctive features that ended up becoming the signature look for the Swiss watchmaker’s timepieces. The first feature is an oversized crown so the watch could be operated by gloved airmen, and the second is a central hand that pointed to a date scale around the edge of the dial. More than 80 years later, the brand is giving their iconic timepiece a major upgrade in the form of their in-house Calibre 403 movement.
The updated 38mm Big Crown Pointer Date now sports one of the Oris Calibre 400 Series of high-performance in-house-engineered automatics. We first saw the Calibre 403 in the 250-piece Hölstein Edition 2021, but the new Big Crown Pointer Date marks the first time the Calibre 403 movement is implemented in a collection piece for Oris. The Calibre 403 has elevated levels of anti-magnetism with 30 anti-magnetic parts that far exceed the norms of the ISO 764 enhanced anti-magnetic standard. Moreover, the updated Big Crown Pointer Date sports a stout five-day power reserve, which it is able to accomplish via twin barrels that house an extended mainspring, each long enough to store two-and-a-half days of power. More impressively, it is accurate to -3/+5 seconds a day, which would make it breeze through chronometer testing. For its multi-piece case, the updated Big Crown Pointer Date features stainless steel construction, and it sports domed sapphire crystals on each side with an anti-reflective coating on the inside. Its gorgeous blue dial features white Arabic numbers as well hour and minute hands that contain Super-LumiNova C1/C3.
While the new Big Crown Pointer Date undoubtedly boasts more sophisticated hardware, its versatility and understated design make it a wonderful combination of form and function. Oris’ updated Big Crown Pointer Date comes with a ten-year warranty and retails for $3,400.
