Glashütte is the traditional home of Saxon watchmaking where the best German watchmakers have their workshops. When it comes to the best German brands it used to be the case that A. Lange & Söhne would be at the top of your list and then there’d be a large gap to their nearest competitor. However, Glashütte Original have closed that gap substantially thanks to a surge in the popularity of retro-vintage designs like their SeaQ diver, as well as their Sixties and Seventies collections. This coincides with them reinventing themselves with a luxe focus and putting more energy into exploring haute horology with new watches like the Glashütte Original PanoMaticCalendar, their first ever annual calendar.
There are two versions of the Glashütte Original PanoMaticCalendar being released, a regular version and a limited edition one. The standard version has a 42mm rose gold case with a silvery dial while the limited edition has a 42mm platinum case with a partially skeletonised dial in galvanised black. Beyond those aesthetic differences the two watches are the same with sapphire crystals front and back and 50m water resistance.
Both watches also have the same layout, which pay homage to the existing Pano collection. An off-centre hours and minutes subdial with overlapping small seconds is situated towards the left hand portion of the dial and the signature panorama date located at 4 o’clock. There’s then a moonphase at 2-3 o’clock that has the same design as last year’s PanoMaticLunar However, as this is a new complication for Glashütte Original, the PanoMaticCalendar display has a brand new retrograde months function. It sweeps around the periphery of the dial from 3-6 o’clock, outside the panorama date. It operates by having a grey sapphire crystal window with a matching tone indicator ring below it with a black indicator that highlights the appropriate month numeral. The colours are swapped to white on black for the limited edition.
The PanoMaticCalendar’s retrograde display means it has a linear scale that doesn’t complete a full circle, with the indicator jumping from the end to the beginning once it completes a cycle. However, Glashütte Original have developed on this design by having a complete indicator ring with four equally spaced indicators. Meaning that while only one indicator will be displayed at a time, the jump from December to January actually reveals the next indicator and is not the original one moving back to January. This creates the illusion of a retrograde display but is actually a single rotating disc that completes a rotation every four years.
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Glashütte is the traditional home of Saxon watchmaking where the best German watchmakers have their workshops. When it comes to the best German brands it used to be the case that A. Lange & Söhne would be at the top of your list and then there’d be a large gap to their nearest competitor. However, Glashütte Original have closed that gap substantially thanks to a surge in the popularity of retro-vintage designs like their SeaQ diver, as well as their Sixties and Seventies collections. This coincides with them reinventing themselves with a luxe focus and putting more energy into exploring haute horology with new watches like the Glashütte Original PanoMaticCalendar, their first ever annual calendar.There are two versions of the Glashütte Original PanoMaticCalendar being released, a regular version and a limited edition one. The standard version has a 42mm rose gold case with a silvery dial while the limited edition has a 42mm platinum case with a partially skeletonised dial in galvanised black. Beyond those aesthetic differences the two watches are the same with sapphire crystals front and back and 50m water resistance.![]()
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Both watches also have the same layout, which pay homage to the existing Pano collection. An off-centre hours and minutes subdial with overlapping small seconds is situated towards the left hand portion of the dial and the signature panorama date located at 4 o’clock. There’s then a moonphase at 2-3 o’clock that has the same design as last year’s PanoMaticLunar (read our review here).![]()
However, as this is a new complication for Glashütte Original, the PanoMaticCalendar display has a brand new retrograde months function. It sweeps around the periphery of the dial from 3-6 o’clock, outside the panorama date. It operates by having a grey sapphire crystal window with a matching tone indicator ring below it with a black indicator that highlights the appropriate month numeral. The colours are swapped to white on black for the limited edition.![]()
The PanoMaticCalendar’s retrograde display means it has a linear scale that doesn’t complete a full circle, with the indicator jumping from the end to the beginning once it completes a cycle. However, Glashütte Original have developed on this design by having a complete indicator ring with four equally spaced indicators. Meaning that while only one indicator will be displayed at a time, the jump from December to January actually reveals the next indicator and is not the original one moving back to January. This creates the illusion of a retrograde display but is actually a single rotating disc that completes a rotation every four years.![]()
The addition of the months display means the PanoMaticCalendar becomes a full annual calendar, the smaller sibling to the extremely prestigious perpetual calendar. Naturally, as this is Glashütte’s first annual calendar, it’s a new movement. Specifically, it’s called the 92-09 (or 92-10 in skeletonised form) and it’s automatic with a gold rotor, 100-hour power reserve and anti-magnetic silicon balance spring. Those specs alone make it pretty spectacular. However, the finishing takes it to another level, a classic Glashütte three-quarter plate with Glashütte stripes, plenty of bevelled edges and a hand engraved balance cock.
Round out the two watches are Louisiana alligator nubuck straps in brown or black depending on the case material. As for price and availability, the standard rose gold is £23,200 and the limited edition platinum is £34,100 with only 150 pieces available. Personally, I actually prefer the standard gold edition. The partial skeletonisation of the platinum edition is cool from a technical perspective of being able to see components like the panoramic date operate, but I feel like it over complicates the aesthetic of the watch which should be refined and elegant. On the other hand, the rose gold version is perfectly balanced.