REVIEW: The Breguet Classic Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel 3797

Felix Scholz

Breguet-Classique-Tourbillon-QP-3797BR — The Breguet Classic Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel 3797 with guilloche dial.

Breguet holds a special place in the world of fine watchmaking. Founded in 1775. Breguet takes it name from Abraham-Louis Breguet, an Eighteenth century watchmaker and horologist responsible for a number of important technical inventions (not least the tourbillon) and a client book comprised of a significant chunk of European royalty and nobility.

Breguet-Annual-Calendar-Tourbillon-Skeleton — And the 3797 with skeletonized dial in platinum.

Fast forward to 2014 and Breguet are still making timepieces that honour the spirit and aesthetic of their founder, such as the brand new Breguet Classic Tourbillion Quantieme Perpetuel 3797. Now, in case you’re not au fait with specific French language watchmaking terms (we get it, you guys have lives – don’t make us feel bad) QP is short for Quantieme Perpetuel which in turn translates to Perpetual Calendar. Not content with telling you the minutes, hours and seconds a QP watch adds day, date, month and leap year to the equation (plus it’s clever enough not to need adjusting for 30 or 31 day months – pretty convenient really).

Breguet-3797-tourbillon — You could get lost in that dial.

Breguet have made this watch available in platinum or pink gold, and with either a guilloche dial or a fully skeletonized dial. And while the solid dial is nice, in our (not so humble) opinion the skeletonized dial is in a whole other league. What’s nice about this dial is that it’s surprisingly readable for skeletonized watch with so many subdials. That said it still might take some getting used to – but if you have to stare at this watch for an extra second or two to read the time, is that really a bad thing. Breguet have achieved this by bringing the subdials with all the crucial information to the fore, elevating them above the other beautiful elements of the watch.

This watch is a perfect size for a modern dress watch too, hitting the 41mm diameter sweet spot that will please the largest number of potential wearers, and the Quantieme Perpetuel 3797 is only 11.6mm thick, which might not be ultrathin status – but it’s pretty impressive, especially given the beautiful tourbillon that dominates the lower half of the dial.

Breguet-3797-tourbillon-wrist — And it doesn’t look too shabby on the wrist.

With this watch Breguet affirm that they are among the masters of classic horology, it showcases their in house design, manufacture and finishing abilities, without resorting to gimmicks.