First Impression: Panerai PAM580 Luminor 1950 Flyback Ceramica

Well, I guess it’s never to early to start talking about SIHH and Basel – it’s like seeing Christmas decorations in October, except less cringe-worthy. Panerai has gotten off to an excellent start with their PAM580 Luminor 1950 Flyback Ceramica. While the name is a mouthful, the looks are clean and handsome. It may look familiar because they’ve done rather similar pieces in steel and gold, but let’s take a deeper look at this black beauty.

Kicking things off for the Flyback Ceramica is the Luminor 1950 case in – you guessed it – full ceramic. With the 1950 case, you’re getting a slightly sleeker design than the standard Luminor, but judging from the early photos, it looks like Panerai went with the less domed sapphire. The sleeker sapphire is probably a good choice since the watch overall isn’t overly vintage looking, especially with the ceramic case. At 44-millimeters wide, it’s the smaller of the two 1950s cases, which is quite all right by us. Normally that’s at the high end of the size cases we prefer, but the short lugs help cut back on wrist domination.

The black sandwich dial looks absolutely fantastic, as is the norm for Panerai dials. The sandwich adds extra depth that seems to be lacking in many cookie-cutter, printed dials. You may not be surprised seeing the running seconds at the 9:00, but then wonder what the grey center-mounted hand is, the one that is shaped like the blue second hand. Well, that’s one of our favorite chronograph choices: a center-mounted minute counter. We love that Panerai’s caliber P.9100 incorporates this feature as it not only cleans up the inner dial, but also allows for 60 minutes of recording, and makes reading the chronograph minutes and seconds all the more intuitive. When the chronograph isn’t in use, you end up with what looks like a very simple time-and-date Luminor.

Here’s a shot of the P.9100 with an almost industrial finish.

Speaking of the caliber P.9100, this is a Neuchatel-born integrated chronograph, featuring a column wheel and vertical clutch. Without getting our hands on it, it’s a safe bet the starting, stopping, and resetting will be like butter. The finishing of the P.9100 is rather spartan, but not too different from the PAM580’s strong, simple appearance. Running at 28,800 bph, the two-barrel design creates an impressive 72 hours of power reserve. We haven’t heard much in the way of thorough reviews of the P.9100, but the stats are impressive.

Pricing for the PAM580 is set for $16,300, which is definitely not cheap. But for a ceramic case with an in-house, fully integrated flyback chronograph, and 3 days of juice, it’s not unreasonable up against the competition. Expect the PAM580 to be just the beginning of what’s to come in early 2015 from Panerai.

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