I Review A Watch: The Circula ProFlight Is Exactly What A Modern Pilot's Watch Should Be

Hey friends, if you’re reading this you are part of the Watch Club and get to read reviews a week in advance. This week, one of my favorite watches of the year!

The Circula ProFlight Is Exactly What A Modern Pilot's Watch Should Be

Full disclosure notice: I have a working relationship with Circula. I created a manual for their watches. But this has in no way influenced this review and absolutely no money has been exchanged for the review, and our relationship did not influence what I had to say. Most of these thoughts were formed before we started working together. Circula paid to ship the watch to me and ship it back,. The folks from Circula don't even know the review is coming out now.

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One of the most disappointing days of my life — not the most, but pretty high up there — was May 19th 1999. It was probably ten in the evening and I was sitting on a curb outside a local theatre here in Zagreb, staring into the distance. It was the better part of an hour before I could start talking to my friend who was sitting just as dumbfounded and disappointed right beside me. We had just seen Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. We were completely obsessed with Star Wars, with chests full of toys at home and VHS tapes ground down to nothing from the repeat viewings. I was just a kid then, twelve years old. You could have just told me that it was a great Star Wars movie and I would have been happy and yet… The Phantom Menace managed to deeply disappoint me. Like, move me so much with disappointment that I still vividly remember that day.

It took dozens of rewatches, years of thinking about the movie and a masters degree in film theory for me to come to peace with that day. I don’t think that The Phantom Menace is that bad of a movie right now (hey, nothing looks bad next to Episode II: Attack of the Clones). As a matter of fact, looking back at it, it was an interesting attempt at a refresh of the Star Wars franchise. They took a classic and thoroughly modernised it, which must be a daunting task. Make a misstep, and you end up with The Phantom Menace. That day in the theatre served as great teaching moment. And the lesson was: don’t meet your heroes. I put too way much expectations into something that could easily, and actually did turn out to, be horrible. Since that day I’m a bit cautious about getting to enthusiastic, often having to remind myself of May 19th 1999.

Any reminders of that sad day just flew out the window the second I opened up the box that holds the Circula ProFlight in blue. Way before I got my hands on one I was pretty sure that this watch would make its way onto my top 10 list of watches this year. It was just a super cool package. So yeah, I was growing more and more fond of the watch. And the red flags were piling up higher and higher. The worst one of all was the fact that the ProFlight was a modern take on a classic, the pilot’s watch. Just like The Phantom Menace. But sometimes, you should meet your heroes.

Circula has a great story. Back in 1926, Karl Huber founded the wholesale Huber & Co in Pforzheim. Karl died in World War II and Karl’s son Heinz Huber took over the wholesale in 1945 and started Circula in 1955. So, the wholesale was continuously active from 1926 to 2017, while Circula was active from 1955 to the end of 2017. And just when it seemed that the family business would shut down, Karl’s great grandson and Heinz’s Grandson Cornelius Huber took over the company in 2018 and brought new life to the company. In a few short years Circula has exploded into a serious German watch brand that draws inspiration from vintage designs, packaging them in a very modern form. I like the vast majority of their watches. But I fell in love with the ProFlight.

I wrote about this before, so I won’t go into too many details, but the Pilot’s watch, the ones we know today — especially the Type A and Type B — have kind of a dark backstory. The Beobachtungsuhren, watches for the observer, or the B-Uhr, were commissioned for pilots by the Reichs-Luftfahrtministerium (also known as the RLM or the Ministry of Aviation), headed by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring under orders from Adolf Hitler whose creation of the Luftwaffe was the final step in the arming of post-war Germany. Now, to be perfectly clear, it’s ludicrous to put down the modern flieger for its origin. If we did that, we couldn’t use a LOT of products. But I was never a fan of the somewhat sterile, efficient and straightforward look of a traditional flieger. This is, of course, a personal preference, so take it with a grain of salt.

Enter Circula. Having already tackled divers, field watches, a compressor-style collection and GMT watches, it was time that they applied their DNA to a pilot’s watch. But Circula didn’t do it alone. They had help from Guy Bove, an industry veteran who let creative departments at Breitling, Chopard, IWC and TAG Heuer. And he didn’t just give his final touch. He was so involved in the process that he revamped the company logo, introduced a new design language and did a lot of fantastic work on the dial.

But before we get to the dial, let’s tackle the outside. Pilot’s watches are always huge, right? Yes and no. And The ProFlight is in the no category. On my massive 21cm wrist it even looked a bit undersized I would say. But that just means that it will fit a wide range of people. Sure, the 40mm width sounds like it should wear very large, as does the 12mm thickness (without the crystal), but what saves the watch is the lug-to-lug which is perfectly wearable at 46mm. On top is a sapphire crystal that’s barely proud of the flat and relatively thin unmarked and fixed bezel. The crystal is domed and Circula says that it’s treated with an antireflective coating on the inside.

The case is actually not radically new. It’s an evolution of cases you will find in other Circula watches and it’s certainly not boring. The circular aperture to the dial sits in contrast with the very angular short lugs and the recess in the side of the case that has a very heavily grained surface. That not only helps the watch look slimmer, it also makes it look interesting which is, you know, important. It’s a beautiful case, actually. Made out of stainless steel, it’s sandblasted all over, giving it a sleek look. But then you get a strip of a highly polished facet on the edge of the bezel that just catches the light perfectly. I would say that the crown is a clear nod to the oversized crowns of huge fliegers of old, but here it’s kept in check size wise. It’s also a pretty capable case. 150 meters of water resistance is decent, but a pilot’s watch really shouldn’t have much water resistance. You’re supposed to go the opposite way. What is very useful is the soft iron shield around the movement antimagnetic up to 80,000 A/m (1,000 gauss). Also, don’t worry about scratching it all that much, as it has a scratch-resistant case treatment with a hardness of 1,200 Vickers.

The dial is really where this watch shines. There are two options, one anthracite and one blue and I instantly fell for the blue. This is where Bove’s influence shines, moving the best of pilot’s watches into the future. One of the defining characteristics of a flieger is a huge triangle at 12 with two dots for easier orientation. Circula reimagines this style flair with a 12 hour marker that is is made up of only two sides of a triangle, for a much slimmer and modern look. The bases of both dials are the same, regardless of color.

On the very periphery is a very thin minute minute track, followed by a heavily grained ring that holds the applied numerals. And look at those numerals. A font designed by Bove is used, standing very tall over the dial and filled with lume — on the anthracite it’s Super-LumiNova C3 X1 that glows green, while the blue gets Super-LumiNova BGW9 that glows blue. At the very centre of the dial is the third disc that’s deeply grooved, both a hint at the pilot heritage of the watch mimicking the rotation of a propeller and the circular nature of Circula. The hour and minute hands are equally as piloty, sword shaped and blue on the blue, white on the anthracite. The seconds hand on the anthracite is all white, but on the blue the top half is white and the lower half a bright orange, which is just a fantastic contrast to the dial, matched with the orange ProFlight model name text.

A word on the movement. The watch world works in cycles of popularity and availability, whether it was the ebauche movements of old, the ubiquitous quartz movements or the rise of ETA sourced movements, every era is marked by one such force. And right now, it’s clear that we are living in the Sellita era. The company capitalised on what can be now described as a misstep on ETA’s part and started cranking out their ETA2824 based SW200 movements. You can’t even imagine the possible setups you can get this in. Time, date, regulator, small seconds here, small seconds there, pointer date, moonphase, day-date… these, and more, are the variants you can get. And then there’s the grades. You can have it as a bare bones movement with no frills all the way up to a COSC certified one. This one humble movement, based on a super familiar architecture from ETA, easily servicable at almost any shop in the world with plenty of spare parts, has democratised watches. A couple of years ago you could get a base SW200 for really cheap and suddenly you could offer a decent microbrand with a Swiss movement for under €500.

The movement inside the ProFlight is the Elaboré grade of the Sellita SW200-1. This will get you a beat rate of 4Hz and at least 38 hours of power reserve. It usually ends up being 41 hours. Circula also adjusts the movement in Pforzheim so the watch you get will be accurate to -5/+7 seconds per day. That’s a pretty good deal.

And last, strap and bracelet. You can get the watch on either a nylon sailcloth strap, blue on the blue, black on the anthracite or you can opt for the stainless steel bracelet that has the same coating as the case and is closed with a milled safety clasp. Both come with quick release spring bars, so it’s a breeze to swap them out if you end up getting both. And I had both, which would be the perfect way to get them. The nylon strap is leather lined and one of the most comfortable straps I have worn in a while. So comfortable that I switched it out to other watches because I liked it so much. On the other hand, there’s the steel bracelet. I loved it. But I love chunky bracelets. I assume most people, especially those with smaller wrists, will not like it. And objectively, that’s the only aspect of this entire watch that could use a bit of improvement. The clasp, for example, has three holes for micro adjust, but it’s not tool-less. In a world of readily available tool-less micro adjust at every budget, that pretty much a necessity.

A couple of years ago, while Sellita prices were lower, this would easily sell under the €1,000 mark, making it unbelievable value for money. As it sits now, it’s fantastic value for money, as it’s priced at €1,029 on the strap and €1,199 on the bracelet. This is more of Empire Strikes Back than The Phantom Menace for me. The Circula ProFlight is absolutely landing on my top 10 list of best watch of this year. And I can’t wait for the deal with my wife to not buy any more new watches to expire, because this will be the first watch I’m getting. See the watch on the Circula website.

-Vuk