Breitling Avenger Automatic GMT 44 A32320101B1X1: specs and checks

A bezel you turn with a gear

Breitling describes this one as a rotating pinion bezel with 24-timezone indication, and the mechanism is worth understanding before you handle it.

An ordinary bezel is gripped at its edge and turned directly. A pinion bezel is driven: a small geared crown engages teeth on the bezel and advances it. You do not grab the ring — you turn the pinion, and the ring follows.

Three consequences.

Do not force the ring. An inspector who takes hold of the bezel and twists, as they would on a dive watch, is applying load to a gear train that was not designed for it.

Test the pinion, not the grip. Work it in both directions and feel for teeth that skip, bind or turn without moving the ring.

Check registration. Because the bezel is geared, it can only sit in the positions the teeth allow. Align a city marker against the 24-hour hand and look straight down: it should be exact. If the ring has slipped a tooth on the pinion, every timezone on it is wrong by the same amount, which is harder to notice and worse in practice than a single misaligned mark.

Forty-four millimetres, and slim

The published dimensions do not go together the way you would guess: 44 mm in diameter and only 12.05 mm thick.

For comparison within this corpus, several 42 mm references are thicker than that — the Chronomat at 13.77, the Superocean Heritage chronograph at 14.55.

Thickness is what determines whether a watch slides under a cuff, and it is a far better predictor of how a big watch wears than the diameter is. A buyer hesitating over 44 mm is usually worried about bulk rather than width, and this reference has a genuinely good answer to that. Quote the number.

The second time zone, over a full day

The Breitling 32 is specified as self-winding mechanical with a 2nd timezone (24 hr), 28,800 v.p.h, 25 jewels, approximately 42 hours.

Set the 24-hour hand to a known offset from local time and then leave the watch for a full day before you check it again. What you are looking for is not the initial setting, which anyone can do, but whether the second time zone holds its relationship to the local hands over twenty-four hours.

Drift there is a movement fault. It is also invisible in a five-minute inspection, which is exactly why it is worth building into an overnight test you were doing anyway.

Forty-two hours of reserve means this stops if it sits for two days, so plan the test with the watch wound.

The case and the strap

300 metres, a screw-locked crown with two gaskets, and a screwed-in case back — solid dive-watch hardware wrapped around a travel complication.

As with any used watch carrying a serious depth rating, treat the number as a factory specification rather than a present-day measurement, and pressure test it if the buyer intends to swim.

The strap is anthracite calfskin, straight, tapering 22/20 mm to a 20 mm stainless steel folding clasp, on lugs measured 22.05 mm.

Calfskin is softer than alligator and wears faster, particularly where it wraps the spring bar. Fold it back at both lug ends and look into the crease. A 44 mm steel watch is a lot of weight for a leather strap to carry, and this is where it gives out first.