Both elegant and sport-inspired, the new Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono is a modern interpretation of the St. Moritz launched in 1980, the first watch designed by Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, today co-president of Chopard. Expressing its creator’s passion for the Alps and inspired by the nobility of the eagle, this timepiece is crafted in Lucent Steel A223, and it features a chronometer-certified luxury chronograph movement with a flyback feature.
Elegant yet sporty, the new Replica Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono is a modern interpretation of the St. Moritz, the first watch designed by Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, now co-president of Chopard, which was launched in 1980. Born from its creator’s passion for the Alps and inspired by the nobility of the eagle, this timepiece has been crafted in ethical 18-carat rose gold and Lucent Steel A223.
The chopard alpine eagle chronograph replica collection is Chopard’s interpretation of the luxury sports watch, a genre that has never waned since it hit the market in 1972. Presented in 2019 in time-and-date and time-only models, the Alpine Eagle collection strengthens its sports credentials with the arrival of this new 44mm automatic flyback chronograph.
Introducing the Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chronograph. At precisely 6pm on March 13th of 1930, one Joel “Woolf” Barnato, decorated British Army field artillery officer, but more importantly a three-times winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, set his empty champagne glass at the bar of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. He leaped with athletic grace into his H.J. Mulliner bodied 6 ½ liter Bentley and roared
Powering the Alpine Eagle Chronograph XL models is Calibre Chopard 03.05-C. This self-winding in-house movement is an impressive feat of horology, and has no less than four patents attached to it. Features include chronometer certification, a flyback chronograph complication with column wheel, 45 jewels, 4Hz operating frequency and 60 hours
The Alpine Eagle collection is Chopard’s interpretation of the luxury sports watch, a genre that has never waned since it hit the market in 1972. Presented in 2019 in time-and-date and time-only models, the Alpine Eagle collection strengthens its sports credentials with the arrival of this new 44mm automatic flyback chronograph.
Cutting straight to the chase: upon its debut we explained in great detail why the Chopard Alpine Eagle ranks among the best value propositions in the otherwise wilfully non-value-oriented luxury steel sports watch segment. A year later, we see the Alpine Eagle collection expand with the Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono that, you guessed it, is a larger, chronograph-equipped, more expensive
In addition, Chopard has introduced a new chronograph version of the Alpine Eagle, the first time this complication has been paired with the raptor-themed model. The dial. The Chopard Alpine Eagle XL Chrono is available in Lucent Steel A223 and offered
To mark the occasion, Chopard has gussied up its time only Alpine Eagle with a new colour scheme. The dial is a bright silver colour which Chopard calls “Vals” grey and features the unique spiral guilloché pattern of the other models. The hands are blue now, as are the markers applied to the dial and printed on the chapter ring.
In the late 1970s, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele — who heads family-owned Chopard today, along with his sister Caroline — introduced his first watch range, the St Moritz.That luxury sports timepiece inspired the Alpine Eagle, a collection launched last year with time-and-date models.It was also Chopard’s answer to the ongoing demand for steel sports watches on integrated bracelets.
Chopard is not only a watchmaker with a host of its own in-house movements (the 03.05-C flyback column-wheel chronograph movement powers all three of the Alpine Eagle chronographs you see here); it’s also jeweler of world-class renown. And to that end, Chopard brings an impressive level of technical strength to the field of metallurgy.
The case on the Alpine Eagle XL Chrono measures a large 44mm in diameter and like the dial has a lot in common with Alpine three-hand models. It has been crafted from Lucent Steel 223, an innovative steel alloy developed by Chopard, and offers anti-allergenic properties and more robustness compared to stainless steel.
In the late 1970s, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele — who heads family-owned Chopard today, along with his sister Caroline — introduced his first watch range, the St Moritz.That luxury sports timepiece inspired the Alpine Eagle, a collection launched last year with time-and-date models.It was also Chopard’s answer to the ongoing demand for steel sports watches on integrated bracelets.
We’ve waxed lyrical about the merits of the Alpine Eagle – the latest sport-inspired timepiece from Chopard – before. You know the story. The Alpine Eagle is a modern reinterpretation of the St Moritz, the first watch Karl-Friedrich Scheufele (now co-president of Chopard) created for the brand back in the 1970s, when he was simply a bold and ambitious 22-year-old watchmaker.
chopard alpine eagle xl chrono replica
Luxury-sports watches are the flavour of the day, and brands in every price segment offer something in the category. Given the fad, Chopard’s launch of the Chopard Alpine Eagle replica last year wasn’t much of a surprise, although the fact that the Alpine Eagle was a reboot of the 1980s St Moritz was unexpected, since the St Moritz was never really a hit. But the St Moritz was smartly reworked, creating a watch that is good looking and in typical Chopard style, very well made and also well priced.
The chopard alpine eagle xl chrono replica has all of the qualities of last year’s base model, but everything comes together better on the chronograph. And despite being more complicated and thus more expensive, the chronograph is arguably better value, and perhaps even the best in class.
When the Alpine Eagle was unveiled almost exactly a year ago, making its debut as a 41 mm three-hander with date, I was impressed by the fit and finish, and also the price; the value proposition was good.
But the three-hand Alpine Eagle isn’t particularly compelling in the hand. To be fair, the base-model Alpine Eagle manages to avoid the usual pitfall for a luxury-sports watch – looking derivative and too similar to the most famous watches in the category – but it is a little plain.
The new Alpine Eagle XL Chrono, on the other hand, is compelling in style, size, and substance. Visually the chronograph works better than the three-hand model, because the sub-dials are well proportioned and ideally positioned, so they full up the dial well and accentuate the sporty look of the watch.
At 44 mm in diameter, the chronograph is exactly the right size. It is big, chunky, and shiny – the case and bracelet are made of a new, proprietary steel – while also being sharply finished inside and out. The case and dial have excellent details, while the movement is smartly designed and finished in a quiet, but worthy, manner.
Even the bracelet is worthy of special mention for being thin yet rigid thanks to a simple but clever construction. But the bracelet also encompasses the only bit of the design that doesn’t quite work: the polished central stripe looks too narrow for the watch.
Importantly, the Alpine Eagle chronograph is priced a little under US$200, which probably makes it the best value amongst high-end, luxury-sports chronographs. In fact, the Alpine Eagle chronograph is mostly a cut above most of the competition in terms of fit and finish, with its only weakness being the competition is better marketed and better known.
The Alpine Eagle is modelled on the St Moritz, a luxury-sports watch that was introduced in 1980 and very much looks the part. In fact, the St Moritz continued to look like a 1980s watch even in its later iterations that remained in production until the mid 2000s.
Chopard sieved out the bits that are overly 1980s, streamlining and refining the St Moritz to create the Alpine Eagle, which retains the best features of its predecessor. So the bezel is now a perfect circle with no bulges or kinks, while having a sharply-defined bevelled edge. And the bracelet has been narrowed slightly to make the case seem larger; the original had a broad bracelet almost as wide as the case, which made the watch look diminutive.
All Alpine Eagle watches in steel are made of Lucent Steel A223, an alloy developed by Böhler, a steel company that’s a subsidiary of Voestalpine, an Austrian industrial conglomerate. Like the gold that Chopard uses in its watches and jewellery, A223 is sustainable, made up of 70% recycled steel.
Taking some four years to develop, A223 cast twice during fabrication – melted and allowed to solidify, and then again – to reduce the quantity and magnitude of inclusions in the alloy. This results in a denser, purer alloy that has properties useful in a watch. For one, A223 is 50% more “abrasion resistant” than conventional steels used for watch cases, a quality achieved by “changing the molecular structure and optimising the microstructure” according to Voestalpine.
And A223 has a brighter white appearance than typical watchmaking steels, which tend to have a greyish tint. The difference in colour is not extremely obvious in the metal, particularly in indoor lighting, but the Alpine Eagle does have a notably lustrous finish that is no doubt a result of finishing but also the nature of the metal itself.
The Chopard Alpine Eagle chronograph is a big watch at 44 mm wide and 13.5 mm high, but it is a good size for a sports chronograph. And it also sits well on the wrist thanks to the angle of the lugs and bracelet.
Design-wise, it is recognisable as being descended from the St Moritz, thanks to the eight screws on the bezel arranged in pairs, as well as the narrow, polished stripe on the bracelet. The protruding flanks of the case, which are actually part of the bezel, do bring to mind the Hublot Big Bang; the resemblance is not so much that the Alpine Eagle seems like a copy, but it is there.
Even if bits of the watch do bring to mind the competition, the case and bracelet finishing is superior to other watches in the same price range. Both are finished with a combination of contrasting brushed and polished surfaces, each separated by well-defined borders.
The case finishing extends to the smallest details, which are all very well done. The holes on the bezel for the screws, for instance, all feature polished countersinks. The oblong chronograph pushers have even, polished bevels along their lengths. And even the crown is neatly finished with a brushed top and polished sides.
The bracelet is similarly well finished – every link has bevelled edges – and ends in an elegant, concealed clasp. The polished central band, however, looks disproportionately thin. It isn’t thin enough to be an accent, but too narrow to be a defining feature of the bracelet.
At the same time, the bracelet is relatively thin. It’s substantial enough to suit the size of the watch, but not so much that it becomes clunky. It also has a good degree of flexibility, thanks to a simple yet unconventional construction.
Instead of the usual pins or screws, the bracelet links are held together by plates that slide into the sides of each link. Each plate is then secured by a large screw in the back of the link. The screws, in turn, also hold the polished links that form the band on the central length of the bracelet. The construction allows the bracelet to flex, while also retaining rigidity.
The Alpine Eagle has an unusually-patterned dial, although it is available in the predictable colours of a luxury-sports watch, namely blue, black, and grey.
The pattern is atypical because most luxury-sports watches have either linear or geometric motifs on the dial. In contrast, the Alpine Eagle dial is deeply stamped with a spiralling, radial pattern with a granular texture that’s inspired by the iris of an eagle’s eye. The pattern is most obvious on the blue dial, and less so on the black.
The dial is well done both in finish and design, with thought evidently having been put into the details. The sub-dials and hands, for example, are design to distinguish the chronograph from the time display.
All three chronograph hands are filled with red Super-Luminova, while the hands for the time are white. And the chronograph sub-dials are ringed in brass, while the constant seconds register is instead recessed, stepped, and surfaced with a smaller concentric pattern.
Though it is not initially obvious, the sub-dials sit slightly higher than usual. This gives the registers more space, which allows the dial to avoid looking cluttered.
One element taken from the original St Moritz that could have been left out is the “XII”. The 12 o’clock marker isn’t a dealbreaker, but because Roman numerals tend to have classical connotations, it feels out of place against everything else, which is modern and clean.
The movement inside the Alpine Eagle chronograph is the Chopard 03.05-C, a high-spec, in-house movement that is derived from the L.U.C 03.03-L, which is found in the brand’s top-end L.U.C chronographs.
Even though the cal. 03.05-C doesn’t have many of the flourishes found in the L.U.C movement, it is still a first-class calibre, especially in a sports chronograph at this price.
To start with, the movement has a respectable, 60-hour power reserve. And it has both a vertical clutch and column wheel, which have become the norm in today’s mid- to high-end chronographs.
Both help to ensure more precise operation of the chronograph, while the vertical clutch allows the chronograph to run without affecting timekeeping. That said, the vertical clutch does impact serviceability, as it has to be replaced as a whole. More notably, the cal. 03.05-C has a flyback function, which is less common.
The decoration is high quality and workmanlike, which means mostly machine-applied finishing and a monochromatic look. But up close it is clear the details have been properly treated.
Screws and jewels sit in countersinks, while the wheels have circular grained faces. Notably, the screw heads have chamfered edges and slots – a tiny detail that could have been forgone but tellingly included.
The Alpine Eagle chronograph is making its debut with three variants, two in steel and one in two-tone steel and gold. The two-tone has a slightly dated look and is the least attractive to me – and it is also substantially more expensive – but two-tone watches have a particular appeal and whoever likes the look will probably find it superior to the other two.
Between the two steel models, the blue dial catches the eye more easily, and reveals the dial pattern more clearly. It does, however, feel a bit formulaic, since practically every luxury-sports watch is now dressed in blue.
The Alpine Eagle chronograph is strong value for money. In fact, it’s probably best in class.
It costs a little under US$200 in steel, which is about the same as the Hublot Big Bang Integral in titanium. While the Hublot has a more aggressive and distinctive style, the Alpine Eagle wins in terms of finishing and mechanics. And the equivalents from Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet hover at the US$200 mark, but the Alpine Eagle is comparable in terms of quality.
But unlike its peers, replica chopard alpine eagle xl chrono doesn’t have much of a history with luxury-sports watches, so the Alpine Eagle doesn’t have a backstory to sell it. But on its own merits the Alpine Eagle is an outstanding watch.
Chopard Alpine Eagle Replica
The biggest trend in the luxury watch industry today is producing items that look like watches that brands feel the market wants to buy. In some fundamental ways, this is a reversal from a more traditional (if nostalgic) approach to designing for a market in which a brand aims to put unique (i.e., distinctive) wristwatch products on the market (as opposed to those that feel too familiar). Nowadays, if a style, material, color, or price point seems hot, the biggest brands want their piece of the supposed action. Today, premium brand steel or mostly-steel watches that comes in integrated bracelets are hot. Chopard’s answer to this craze is the Replica Chopard Alpine Eagle. In summary, it is a handsome, well-made, appropriately priced, and too vaguely branded luxury wristwatch for daily wear.
Chopard Alpine Eagle Replica has every right to enter the contemporary bracelet watch arena with a brand new product (that is meant to look like an older product). Chopard comes to the plate with its Geneva-based pedigree, legitimacy through its luxury sport watch and haute horology L.U.C collections, and sex appeal through its various celebrity relationships and success with women’s jewelry. Consumers should not feel at all strange about a product from this brand competing in a space that also includes the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, Patek Philippe Nautilus, Rolex Submariner (yes), and some upcoming newer contenders each with their own “bracelet watches.”
Making the decision to produce a luxury “sports” watch in steel (though in this review I look at the two-tone Alpine Eagle in Lucent Steel and 18k rose gold) is just half the battle, as Chopard also needed to decide what it was going to look like. Chopard was nice enough to have aBlogtoWatch launch the new Alpine Eagle watch collection here. In that article, our David Bredan explains in thorough detail all about the Alpine Eagle and its design inspiration, which was a vintage bracelet watch Chopard produced known as the St. Mortiz. David’s article is where you should learn about the background of this watch, as well as its more intimate technical details. This Chopard Alpine Eagle watch review is my assessment of its larger desirability and its positioning in the space of competing products.
I wore the two-tone Chopard Alpine Eagle for a decent time but then waited some time to type up the review. When this happens, it means that I am not quite sure how to best sum up my experience with a watch, especially if I’ve had a positive experience with a known controversial product. Is the Alpine Eagle controversial? No more than any other new high-end luxury watch is, but it is the most important Chopard release of 2019, and probably a platform the company will continue to invest it for at least five to 10 years (at least, I hope). People who don’t like the Alpine Eagle have one major problem with it, and that is they feel it looks too much like the Royal Oak or other similar watches. That is it. People aren’t concerned about pricing or quality; their sole gripe with the Alpine Eagle is that it looks a bit too much like another popular watch. I’m not even sure most consumers see that as a bad thing.
Let’s look at this in a light that is the most favorable to Chopard — because the logic makes sense. First, let’s begin with an important rule in the luxury watch industry (and other “design” industries): Original and creative designs are almost universally shunned at first or criticized because they are new. Familiar designs are, by definition, much less creative but are more readily accepted by consumers. This is a hard and fast rule. What can happen is that, with some time in the market, a novel design may become eventually adopted if it ends up being a good design — that is after time has tested it. Not all novel designs become classics, but all good novel designs have the potential to become classic if they are around long enough. In the world of design, while a simplification, this is a good rule.
Chopard, in this scenario, had the option of making a totally novel watch called the Alpine Eagle and design it to look like nothing else ever made before. By doing this, they might have critics celebrating the enduring elegance of their watches 10 years from now and have an uphill battle to climb with deservedly stubborn luxury watch consumers for the first few years. Option two is for Chopard to say, “We know we want to get into bracelet watches, but we also don’t want to wait years before making a profit. Let’s produce something that fits into market expectations and themes and see how it goes. If it is successful, then, with each future iteration we improve it and make it more distinctive.” Such remarks may very well be how Chopard’s managers are thinking, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. As I said, the Alpine Eagle is a well-made product. So they did succeed on many levels.
Also, I want to put “design originality” into some context. It is extremely easy for people to claim that so and so copied Gerald Genta, and that such and such watch model is simply trying to look like a Royal Oak. If you look back at many bracelet watches from the 1970 and 1980s, they looked alike back then, as well. Perhaps there simply were not that many practical ways to produce a timepiece with an integrated bracelet. You might feel that the Alpine Eagle looks too much like a Royal Oak. You’d be right that there is a resemblance, but that same resemblance is in the Chopard St. Moritz and countless other watches from that era.
For the rest of the Chopard Alpine Eagle Replica Watch, Chopard simply took a cross-section of various manufacturing techniques at their disposal, along with some of their brand’s visual DNA, and tried to marry horology and jewelry polishing into a single satisfying product. What items in the “bracelet watch” category all have in common are a lot of shiny surfaces. Accordingly, the Alpine Eagle’s contrasting polished and brushed surfaces are mostly flat, which helps them play nicely with the light. The noticeable amount of light sparkle you want from a luxury timepiece is certainly part of the Alpine Eagle experience.
Chopard certainly lacked more than one opportunity to be original with the Alpine Eagle. There is nothing in the bracelet watch rule book that says you must have screws in the bezel or that you must have side flanks. Alas, the Alpine Eagle has both of those. They are certainly well done (and the screws all line up properly) but they feel forced. I know that the original St. Mortiz watch had bezel screws, as well, but I’m just saying that since this design feature is used so often, it pays for a brand to do them in an extra-original manner to stand out.
The 41mm-wide case (a 36mm-wide model for women is also available) is a good all-purpose size, and the case also manages to be under 10mm-thick (with 100 meters of water resistance), which allows for a slim wrist profile. I will say that the bezel (here in 18k rose gold) seems like a bit of a scratch magnet (especially due to the brushed finishing). Aesthetically, it looks gorgeous, but I can’t help but feel that Chopard might want to consider a scratch-resistant metal alloy, ceramic, or other material for the bezel of some future Alpine Eagle models.
Worry about wear and tear on a watch are reserved for the most well-finished of timepieces. So that merely means I admire the considerable effort it takes to polish each Alpine Eagle. The steel is not normal 316L stainless steel but rather something called A223 Lucent Steel, which has a whiter color and polishes up uniquely. It certainly helps the Alpine Eagle reflect light in some very attractive ways.
Another thing of beauty on the Alpine Eagle is the bracelet. The visual design of it isn’t to everyone’s tastes, but the tight tolerances and overall engineering are admittedly impressive. Unfortunately, this is all work that started on the original St. Moritz watch, but for the Alpine Eagle, Chopard really put the bracelet on to steroids and into overdrive for a very sophisticated-looking and well-finished jewelry-style bracelet. It is probably my favorite part of the watch. The bracelet closes elegantly with a “mystery” hidden deployant clasp. It would have, however, been nice to see a micro-adjust feature or similar system which, in addition to being convenient, would help Chopard have more functional advantages over the competition.
Grand Seiko helped remind the watch community that everyone likes a good dial texture. Chopard created a new spiraling deep-cut sunburst-style dial that is colored gray for this Alpine Eagle model. This (or a similar look) may have been used on some older Chopard watches, and the texture does help give the watch dial a lot of character. The mixed index and Roman numeral hour markers are legible and filled with Super-LumiNova luminant — but they don’t have much personality beyond their functional value. The hands are solid, sporty, and well-proportioned. They also look like cousins made in the same factory (a compliment) as the latest generation Royal Oak hands with their angled edges.
One of the best features on the dial is the date window. Not that this is a very exciting complication, but you can see how Chopard clearly agonized over making it look as clean and harmonious as possible. The result is a custom date disc with a custom date font and color. The window is a custom placement and with a custom shape. While we’ve all seen date windows before, Chopard went to the trouble of engineering a totally new one just so that it would look good for the Alpine Eagle. While some of the design ethos may get confused from time to time on the Alpine Eagle, the watch doesn’t suffer from a series of very attentive eyes making sure it stands out in the market.
Inside the Chopard Alpine Eagle All Diamond Replica Watch is one of the brand’s in-house movements – the caliber 01.01-C. The thin 4Hz automatic movement has a long power reserve of 60 hours. You can also view the movement through the caseback window. The movement is perfectly respectable but it is not from the finest looking family of movements that Chopard produces. Outside of Ferdinand Berthoud, the Chopard L.U.C movements are the best- looking ones.
You can get an L.U.C watch for Alpine Eagle money, but the Alpine Eagle has the same base movement as those in the Classic Racing models (those that have in-house movements). Knowing how lovely-looking the L.U.C movements are, it is hard not to want that level of finishing on the caliber 01.01-C. Again, assuming the Alpine Eagle collection becomes a hit, there is no reason why Chopard can’t play around with future models and include a variety of movements in it.
Another way to view the Alpine Eagle as a product in the luxury watch market is as a spirited love-letter to the Royal Oak. It doesn’t want to be the Royal Oak, per se, but it wants to live up to the Royal Oak’s standards and be approved by the same crowd. To do that, Chopard will have to go beyond merely making a visual love letter to the Genta icon — it will have to replicate the years the Royal Oak took to really penetrate the market and will have to give it time before enough consumers try to adopt Alpine Eagles into their timepiece collections.
Where Chopard offers a nice incentive to early Alpine Eagle adopters is price. The Alpine Eagle in all-steel is especially attractively priced when compared to a Patek Philippe 5711 Nautilus. It also beats the Royal Oak in price. Personally, I truly admire this watch and sincerely hope that Chopard invests in giving the collection the patience and investment in personality that it needs to become a success.