Patek Philippe’s most original travel timepiece
Its new two-time zone watch is easy to operate, with excellent legibility
PATEK PHILIPPE ISN’T ALL ABOUT minute repeaters, perpetual calendars and chronographs. It’s big also on travel timepieces. After all, the brand is a pioneer of the world-time watch.
It has also developed a two-time-zone travel watch. The watch has two centre hands, one for home time and the other for local time. One hand, the GMT hand, adjusts in one-hour steps, forwards or backwards.
The watch is easy to operate and offers excellent legibility. Since 2015, Patek Philippe has extended the two-time zone system to almost all its collections – in the Nautilus, Aquanaut, Calatrava and Grand Complication – pairing it with other complications and dial designs.
Early this year, with borders fully reopened after Covid and travel returning with a vengeance, the luxury Swiss watch brand rolled out four more two-time zone as well as world-time travel models: the Calatrava 24-Hour Display Travel Time Reference 5224R-001; two Calatrava Pilot Travel Time chronographs, 5924G-001 and 5924G-010; and the Minute Repeater World Time Rare Handicrafts 5531G.
The two-time zone 5224 is the most novel among them, in fact of all Patek Philippe’s travel watches to date. It has a 24-hour dial. Though not new to Patek Philippe, the last time it made one was in 1905, in a pocket watch for a Brazilian watch retailer.
While a throwback to a historical timepiece, the 5224 has all the trappings of a modern watch – and more. It has a striking navy-blue dial framed in the elegant finesse of a Calatrava case in rose gold. The case is strapped on the wrist by a matching navy-blue calfskin strap with a rose gold pronged buckle. At 42 mm wide, it’s larger than the usual 40 mm Patek Philippe case, but this is tempered by the watch’s slim profile highlighted by a curved double-stepped lugs. The larger case also allows for a bigger and more legible dial.
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A double railway-track scale for the hours and minutes gives an extra shine to the dial, while beautiful plays of light bounce onto it from the refined finishings of the circular striated centre, the hour circle and the small-seconds counter.
The 24-hour display on the dial consists of alternating Arabic numerals and hour markers and five-minute markers – a total of 44 rose-gold appliqués, polished together to obtain a uniform brilliance and applied individually by hand. The dual time zone has three syringe-shaped hands in rose gold: A local hour and minute hand are both luminescence-coated; and a home hour hand is pierced in the centre.
Noon on the 24-hour display in the 5224 is at 12 o’clock, like in the standard 12-hour display watch, but unlike most 24-hour display timepieces. This is to ensure “excellent legibility throughout the day time hours”. To preserve the sleek lines of the case, the correction pushers for local time found on many earlier Patek Philippe travel watches are replaced with a patented correction system operated on the crown. To correct the local time, pull the crown out to the intermediate position and move it backwards or forwards.
The 5224 is powered by a new micro rotor automatic movement. Caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H, visible through the transparent sapphire-crystal case-back, combines an ultra-thin self-winding base caliber, a 24-hour mechanism and a Travel Time device.
It also incorporates patents from three earlier Patek Philippe timepieces – the 2011 Annual Calendar Regulator Ref 5235, the 2021 In-Line Perpetual Calendar Ref 5236P-001 and the 2022 Annual Calendar Travel Time Ref 5326G-001. Price: S$76,400
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