Last year, Zenith went a little chronograph crazy. By my count, we wrote about eleven different flavors of El Primero in 2021 between various new releases, limited editions, and super high frequency art pieces. Don?t get me wrong: the El Primero is great, but last year?s releases could have you thinking that Zenith, a brand I love all out of proportion, had forgotten that they do in fact make watches that aren?t chronographs. The recent release of the ?Revival? version of the A3642 was heartening for me because it signaled that Zenith hadn?t forgotten anything at all, and with the newly announced Defy Skyline you could almost convince this longtime Zenith fan that 2022 might be the Year of the Defy. Dare to dream. 

For Zenith, the Defy line has always been an opportunity to showcase the latest in horological technology, whether in the arena of robust case manufacturing (early Defys in the 70s used rubber shock absorbers to protect their movements, a novel and effective idea at the time), chronometry (the souped up El Primero 9004 movements found in Defy 21 chronographs), or materials tech (so much ceramic). The new Skyline continues in this vein with a movement ripped from last year?s Chronomaster Sport, their next generation chronograph with a 1/10th second timer. You?d be correct to ask yourself what relationship the movement in the Chronomaster Sport (the El Primero 3600) has to this new watch, which is very clearly not a chronograph at all. What Zenith has do...