Daytona chrono legibility (or why Rolex binned the red seconds hand)

[Devildog]

Don’t get me wrong. I love this watch. It wasn’t my first dial choice, but when I saw it I couldn’t say no.

I used to think my RG/chocolate arabic dial Daytona was bad for hand/dial contrast. But I don’t think it’s the worst.

At least the white gold hour and minute hands on this one contrast well with the dark dial so it’s easier to see the time at a glance.

However the chronograph function (being the whole point of the Daytona) is largely unusable in anything but perfect, bright, light.



And it’s worse in real life than the picture shows

Which got me thinking and may explain why Rolex dropped the red chrono seconds hand for the new 126518 “Paul Newman” dial. It just disappears against the black dial. It’s been an unpopular decision on the forum but I now understand the change.

But, hey, let’s be honest. We don’t really buy our Daytona’s to actually use the chronograph for anything important do we?

So it may be largely unusable day to day, but when the light hits the red hands just right (and it looks even better than this picture shows) who really cares? Not me.




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