Breitling Superocean Heritage B01 42 AB0156161C1S1: specs and checks

Fourteen and a half millimetres

The headline number on this reference is not the diameter. It is the height.

14.55 mm — taller than anything else Breitling publishes among the references here. The same brand's 44 mm GMT is 12.05; its 38 mm Superocean Heritage is 9.35.

That is what you pay in height for combining a 200-metre case with a chronograph — two pushers, a thicker case band and a screw-locked crown all have to fit.

A buyer choosing between 42 mm watches is usually thinking about width. They should be thinking about this. A case of this height sits noticeably higher, it catches a cuff, and it is the most common reason a large chronograph comes back.

Quote it. It is one number, it is published, and it settles the question in advance.

Blue on blue is a photography problem

The dial is blue. The rubber strap is blue.

Matched colours across two different materials are hard to represent honestly, because lacquer and rubber respond to light differently. Under warm indoor lighting the strap can look purple against a dial that looks navy. Under a phone camera's automatic correction, one or the other will shift.

A buyer who sees mismatched blues in your photographs will assume the strap is not original.

Photograph both together, in daylight, with a fixed white balance, and include a neutral grey card in one frame. Then look at the result and ask whether it matches what is on your bench. If it does not, shoot it again rather than explaining it in text.

The 30-minute chronograph, again

Breitling publishes the movement here as Breitling 01 (Manufacture) with 41 jewels and a chronograph reading quarter seconds and 30 minutes — the same configuration as the Premier, and not the 12-hour version listed on the Navitimer and Chronomat pages.

Reserve is approximately 70 hours, frequency 28,800 v.p.h.

Test it by running past thirty minutes and watching the minute counter step cleanly at each mark, then resetting and confirming the seconds hand returns to exactly zero.

And take the specification from this page rather than from another Breitling chronograph. Describing a 12-hour totaliser this watch does not have is a mistake the buyer will catch by counting subdials in your own photographs.

Three holes in a 200-metre case

20 bars — 200 metres, a screw-locked crown with two gaskets, two chronograph pushers, and a screwed-in sapphire case back.

Work all three penetrations. The crown should thread cleanly from the first quarter turn. Each pusher should take a similar, definite pressure and return crisply — a soft or sticky pusher is a gasket telling you about itself.

As with every used watch carrying a depth rating: the number describes the watch when it was new. Pressure test it or say that you have not.

The strap is rubber, which perishes from inside a crease. Do not inspect it lying flat. Fold it back hard at each lug and look into the bend for fine cracking.

Case: 42 mm across, lugs measured 22.05 mm. The strap narrows from 22 to 18 mm and closes on a steel folding clasp of 18 mm.