Breguet Type XX Chronographe 2067 2067ST/92/3WU Review

For me there are a few select few watch brands that I just hold in higher regard than others. While there are newer up and coming brands that are doing amazing things, some of these more established brands have nothing left to prove when it comes to the world of watches.

One of these brands is Breguet. Breguet is the third oldest watch manufacture being founded in 1775 by Abraham-Louis Breguet in Paris. Only Blancpain (1735) and Vacheron Constantin (1755) were founded before Breguet and are still operational today.



Abraham-Louis Breguet is arguably the most well known and important figure in the history of watchmaking. Breguet was born in Switzerland in 1747 and moved to Paris at a young age to study watchmaking. In short time Breguet’s skill was widely known and he became renowned for his innovation. Some of Breguet’s most well known accomplishments include creating the world’s first self-winding watch known as the Perpetuelle in 1780 and developing the tourbillion in 1801.

Having been involved in the higher end of the watch industry for nearly 20 years, I’ve been around a lot of references from Breguet. I’ve handled everything from time only pieces all the way up to high complications. The case fit and finish as well as the detailing of the movements are just a step above pretty everything else you’re going to come across.



Although I’ve handled and played with a lot of Breguet watches, I’ve never spent more than an hour or two with one on my wrist. One of the goals of Hourstriker is to provide reviews on watches we have spent extended time with, we feel this is the only real way to give our honest opinion of how life with a watch will be. Over the last few weeks I’ve been speaking with the team over at Breguet who agreed to send me a Breguet of my choosing to review.

Breguet has an exhaustive catalog of watches, so picking one to review was a bit of an undertaking. I thought something like the Tradition would be a great choice given its eye catching design, and of course one of their tourbillions would be fitting for the brand. When it came time to make up my mind, I actually went in a totally different direction.



The watch I ended up picked was the Type XX Chronographe 2067. Like many watches we know and love today such as the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and IWC Big Pilot, the Type XX was born out of military requests during the middle of the 20th century. In the early 1950s, the French Ministry of Defense issued specifications for a pilot’s chronograph which Breguet put their bid in for along with other watchmakers. In 1954 the Type XX was born and Breguet started supplying chronographs for the French military.

The defining characteristics of the Type XX was the flyback chronograph function which allowed pilots to reset and restart the chronograph with a single push without having to stop the chronograph first. Also important in the design of the Type XX was the highly legible dial with luminous markings which made viewing the watch at a glance possible. Finally the Type XX needed to have a rotating bezel that allowed for measuring elapsed time.



Today we’ll be taking a closer look at the Type XX Chronographe 2067, which is the newest reference in the long history of the Type XX from Breguet. We ended up picking the Type XX to review first from Breguet for a few reasons. Mainly the Type XX is probably the most usable everyday watch from the brand, it offers the extremely useful chronograph function and comes in at a nice size of 42 mm. While the $19,100 retail price isn’t exactly cheap, it is a more obtainable option than a lot of watches from Breguet which tend to be crafted out of precious metal and feature higher complications.

On the arrival of the Type XX, the first thing I noticed about the watch was its large crown. I’m personally used to large crowns like the one on my IWC Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar, but for some reason the crown size didn’t hit me in pictures of the Type XX. I personally love the touch and it goes well with the need of larger crowns on pilot’s watches that are intended to be used with flight gloves.



The next thing that caught my attention was the color of the numerals and hands on the black dial. The hands and hour numerals have a very pleasing beige hue to them and give the watch an almost vintage patina look to it. The contrast between the hands and numerals to the matte black dial is very effective and make telling them time with a glance very easy.

Finally the last thing I initially noticed was the beige leather strap that perfectly matches the color of the numerals and hands. The strap has a suede texture to the top of it and has lighter colored stitching running along either side. As expected the quality of this strap is top tier and also wore like a dream, even during the brutal hot and humid summer here in Austin.



As mentioned before, the case of the Type XX has a diameter of 42 mm and is crafted out of stainless steel. We measured the case thickness to be 14.4 mm and the lug to lug to be 48.8 mm. On the leather strap with stainless steel pin buckle the Type XX weighed in at 101 grams. I am a fan of larger watches, typically over 50 mm lug to lug, but during my time with the Type XX, I never really felt that the watch felt small. Maybe the thickness played a bit into the watch feeling a little larger than it was, but honestly the bulkiness made me like the watch more. 101 grams isn’t feather light, but being made out of stainless steel and not something more exotic like titanium or ceramic, the Type XX was light enough while still feeling substantial. Also the watch never caused any wrist fatigue while wearing it.

The Type XX has a flat black dial which is visible under the domed sapphire crystal. There is a minute track going around the edge of the dial with each five minute interval being set with a lumed marker. Along with these markers, the hour, minute and seconds hands, numerals, chronograph minute hand and 12 o’clock mark on the bezel are all covered in luminous material which glows a brilliant green in low light situations.



At 3 o’clock you have a subdial that records minutes for the chronograph, at 6 o’clock you have an hour counter for the chronograph and at 9 o’clock you have the running seconds for the watch. The dials at 6 and 9 o’clock are smaller than the dial a 3 o’clock and feature white numerals and a white hands with concentric circle finishing. The chronograph minutes hand at 3 o’clock is slightly larger and features the larger lumed hand as well as larger stick markers. Each marker on the chronograph minutes hand also represents one minute of elapsed time totaling 15 minutes.

Wrapping up the dial is the Breguet logo at 12 o’clock and a color matching date window at 4:30. Underneath the date window is the “Swiss Made” marker, which is the first time I’ve seen this text at 4:30 on any watch I’ve handled in recent memory. The date window and “Swiss Made” text being sandwiched between the 4 and 5 hour numerals as well as so close to the large chronograph minutes subdial gives a bit of a busy appearance to that section of the dial. I’d honestly just forgo the date on this dial to be perfectly honest. This might be personal preference, but I’m starting to only like dates on calendar watches. Mostly because I’m lazy and having a date adds a ton of time to setting a watch, but also sometimes it adds a bit of clutter to the dial. I have to be honest though, I didn’t really notice the date window when wearing the Type XX, it’s more when I’m examining the watch a bit more closely while doing this review that its presence became more noticeable.



The Type XX has a polished stainless steel bi-directional bezel requiring 120 clicks to complete a full rotation. The bezel is rather thin and allows more space for the dial. The bezel has the numerals for 1 through 11 done in a more playful font than the numerals found on the dial. Between each numeral is a dot and 12 has been replaced with a triangle point of lume. The bezel is extremely sure and requires a decent amount of force to move in either direction. This has to be one of the nicest bezels I’ve played with in recent memory. There is zero chance you are going to mistakenly set this bezel to anything be the intended setting. Like any polished surface, the bezel can attract fingerprints that need to be wiped off time to time.

The sides of the case along with the top of the scalloped lugs are brushed, while the edges of the lugs are polished. The chronograph pushers as well as the crown are also polished. The play between polished and brushed finishes gives the Type XX a very handsome appearance in my opinion. The polished areas give the watch a dressier look, while the brushed areas still show that the Type XX is a serious tool watch.



The crown of the Type XX does not screw down, but Breguet is still able to offer 100 meters of water resistance on the watch. This is more than enough to take the Type XX on a quick dip into the pool and not worry about it getting rained on, but I’d not suggest you shower nor do any kind of diving with it on. Manually winding the Type XX feels great and has a nice sense of resistance on the crown. You can even hear the movement winding while you turn the crown if you listen close enough. Pulling out the crown to position one sets the date, while position two sets the time.

The upper chronograph pusher at 2 o’clock has a nice and solid feel to it when pushed in. This pusher controls starting and stopping the chronograph. The lower pusher at 4 o’clock controls resetting the chronograph. If pushed while the chronograph is stopped, the chronograph is reset like on any chronograph out there. When the chronograph is running, this bottom pusher will instantaneously reset the chronograph and have it restart. This flyback function adds a lot of complexity to the movement, but is an extremely useful complication.



Flipping the watch over shows off the sapphire crystal set display back. Around the crystal all the important information about the watch is engraved, including the individual number of the watch. Breguet used a skeletonized black rotor that is meant to represent the wing of an airplane to wind the in-house caliber 728. The rotor doesn’t block much of the beautifully finished movement and can easily be moved out of the way to really get a glimpse of the movement and some of its 350 components. While the movement isn’t finished too over the top, it does feature hand finishing on the bridges and elements of the chronograph. I feel Breguet did this to force the narrative that the Type XX is a no frills tool watch.

The bigger story with the self-winding caliber 728 is its high frequency and patent pending flyback chronograph movement. The caliber 728 beats away at 36,000 vph (5Hz), much more than the traditional 21,600 or 28,800 vph found on most watches. Even with this fast of a movement the Type XX still offers 60 hours of power reserve. You can see how smooth this movement is by watching the seamless sweep of the small seconds hand at 9 o’clock. The caliber 728 also features an escapement and balance spring made out of silicone. On out timegrapher the Type XX is by far the most accurate watch we have ever tested. We have had another watches read +/- 0 seconds per day, but they normally took a few seconds after being wound or after being positioned to settle into that rate. The Type XX just read +/- 0 no matter what we did to the watch or what position we put it in. Also hearing the timegrapher tick away at 36,000 vph was pretty cool.



Not only does Breguet offer a flyback chronograph in the Type XX 2067, but is also makes sure the flyback system always has constant force. This ensures that the flyback chronograph acts the exact same way on every reset request. In a typical flyback chronograph, if the flyback pusher isn’t completely depressed there is a chance not all the chronograph hands will be reset consistently, the flyback system on the caliber 728 eliminates this concern completely.

Moving on to the strap, Breguet includes two straps with the Type XX 2067. There is the beige leather strap that we spoke about previously and also a fabric NATO style strap. Breguet employs a quick change system on its strap, so changing straps requires little time and no tools. Basically you just depress a button on the strap allowing you to take the strap off of the spring bar and then just snap the strap back on when you want to replace it.



The lugs of the Type XX measure 21 mm and the leather strap tapers down to 18 mm at the stainless steel pin buckle. The buckle has Breguet printed on either side of it and is brushed finished, while the pin is polished. As I have said before when it comes to pricier watches, I really wish manufactures would put these watches on deployant clasps. I have dropped too many watches on pin buckles to now be overly careful when putting on watches featuring these types of buckles. The entire time I had the Type XX, I would make sure I was over rug or a counter when putting the watch on or taking it off. Of course I never dropped the watch, but that fear wouldn’t be there if the watch was on a deployant clasp.

For the two weeks or so I had the Breguet Type XX, I really tried to wear the watch as if it was my own. This was actually pretty easy since three of our personal watches were off getting repaired and serviced. I initially thought I’d wear the Type XX on the NATO strap, but ended up really preferring the leather strap. I have to say whatever leather Breguet uses on their straps is next level, the strap had zero break in and was comfortable from day one. Even some very nice leather straps I have from IWC for instance take a bit to get broken in and comfortable, not so with this Breguet leather.



I also thought that perhaps the beige of the strap might clash with my main outfit choice of black t-shirts, but it wasn’t the case. I think the large black dial probably had something to do with that though. The more no-nonsense design of the Type XX also lent itself nicely to my t-shirt, shorts and sneakers dress code as well. Not once did I feel the watch felt out of character for what I was wearing. I do also feel the watch could be dressed up if needed, but I didn’t really give it that chance.

On the wrist the Type XX was a dream, it never felt too heavy, too tight or too loose. I’m not sure if it was the strap, but I didn’t struggle at all to find a good position on the strap that worked in all conditions including 70 degree air conditioned rooms as well as 100+ degree and humid walks outside in the blazing Texas sun. Although a little smaller than my preferred 50+ mm lug to lug, the Type XX stayed true to my wrist and didn’t favor either side while being worn. When a watch starts to favor a side of my 7.25 inch wrist and isn’t centered, it just drives me crazy.



I used the chronograph a few times while timing drives out and about running errands as well as timing cooking some lamb and steaks while barbecuing. Each press of the chronograph pushers was a delight and just playing with the flyback function is a little more fun than I’d like to admit. The high contrast dial also made telling the time by just glancing at the watch super easy, really nice when driving or carrying a fussy 20 month old.

I did wear the Type XX out a few times for dinner and drinks and was asked about the watch a few times. One person even knew what the watch was, but wasn’t aware of the newer reference. After letting him play with the watch he was thoroughly impressed. Others who asked about the watch weren’t aware of the brand, so it was fun to tell them a little bit of the history of Breguet and the Type XX as well. Something missing with even the nicest newer brands is the lack of story, in the case of Breguet and Type XX that is the furthest thing from the truth. I’d say if you want a watch to get noticed while wearing it, the Type XX isn’t the best, but if somebody happens to know about watch and spots it, chances are you’ll leave that person pretty impressed. Sadly that is the case for any watch that isn’t a gold or sports Rolex, Richard Mille, Audemars Piguet or Patek, people just don’t know what other watches are or their importance… but to real watch people brands like Breguet really matter and are something they love to see in the metal.



When it comes to alternatives to the Breguet Type XX, we should probably look at other flyback chronographs. IWC is long associated with pilot’s watches has produced pilot’s watches with flyback chronographs in the past like my personal Top Gun Flyback Chronograph IW388001, but currently there are none in their catalog. The closest they have in their current catalog is the Portugieser Yacht Club Chronograph Edition Orlebar Brown. This watch is a bit larger than the Type XX at 44.6 mm and features an in-house caliber 89361 featuring a flyback chronograph. The design of the Yacht Club is a bit more contemporary than the military inspired Type XX as well. The IWC also doesn’t have the constant force style flyback mechanism found in the Type XX. The Yacht Club Chronograph does come in a lot less than the Type XX at $12,900 though.



If you start to look at other competing brands to Breguet, you can look at the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph 26240ST. This 41 mm stainless steel watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet and has the whole integrated sports watch look. While the diameter of the Royal Oak is the same as the Type XX, the watch will wear much larger due to the integrated bracelet’s flair out. Audemars Piguet does have similar (not as long) heritage to Breguet, but the Royal Oak retails for nearly $20,000 more than the Type XX and that is before you factor in even higher secondhand prices.



Finally there is the Air Command from Swatch Group stable mate Blancpain. The Air Command is similar size to the Type XX at 42.5 mm, but is only currently available in titanium. The movement in the Air Command also beats at 36,000 vph, but has a slightly shorter power reserve of 50 hours. While there isn’t the rich history of the Air Command that the Type XX has, the Air Command does share a lineage with the ever important Fifty Fathoms, Blancpain is a slightly older brand than Breguet though. The Air Command is also slightly more expensive than the Type XX at $20,500.

As for value for the money, I feel the Type XX 2067 is a great buy. For under $20,000 you are getting a watch you can easily use as your daily watch that has one of the most impressive and innovative in-house flyback chronograph movements available. Remember that up until just recently the chronograph was considered one of the most challenging functions to create, even more so with a flyback feature. You also get the amazing legacy of Breguet to go along with the watch. Breguet isn’t only known for their complications, but their case and movement finishing as well. With how the caliber 728 destroyed our timegrapher in terms of pure accuracy, it’s a real testament to Breguet’s ability to build a top class movement.



I would have zero issue recommending the Type XX Chronograph 2067 to anyone looking for a higher end luxury chronograph. As long as the person likes the vintage military inspired design of the watch, I feel there really aren’t many pitfalls to owning one. My biggest gripe is the size and position of the date window, but even I didn’t really notice that while wearing the watch in everyday situations.

Is the watch for me personally? I’d say with my personal preference for larger watches and also watches in materials like carbon, titanium and ceramic the Type XX isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, but it is very close. If Breguet would make a titanium version at say 44 mm, they’d be right in my sweet spot. I do have a very particular taste though, I don’t even own a stainless steel watch personally. The only stainless steel watch we currently have is my wife’s steel and platinum Yacht-Master 16622.



I am able to come away from my time with the Breguet Type XX 2067 extremely impressed though. There isn’t anything to nitpick as to the quality of the watch in terms of case, strap and movement. You can really see on this watch that Breguet has been making watches since the 1700s, more than enough time to perfect your craft.

We’d really like to thank Breguet for sending us this Type XX Chronographe 2067 to review. It was a really nice watch to re-introduce us to Breguet and especially their newer references. We can’t wait to see what they can send us next to review!



For more information about the Type XX Chronographe 2067 please visit : Breguet

Technical Specifications

Reference Number: 2067ST/92/3WU

Retail Price: $19,100

Case Size: 42 mm

Lug to Lug: 48.8 mm

Thickness: 14.4 mm

Weight: 101 Grams

Case Material:  Stainless Steel

Bezel: Stainless Steel

Strap: Leather with Stainless Steel Pin Buckle

Movement: Breguet Caliber 728

Functions: Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Date, Flyback Chronograph

Power Reserve: 60 Hours

Water Resistance: 100 Meters