Victorinox Introduces the Swiss Army Heritage, a Tough Quartz Field Watch

For watch enthusiasts with collections that are expanding rather than retracting, there’s an obvious appeal to the so-called “grab and go” watch. The nature of having a rotation of mechanical watches that you cycle through day after day leads to a problem that is in many ways inevitable, unless you’re heavily invested in watch winders: eventually, those mechanical watches are going to come to a cold stop. It’s a predicament many of us have found ourselves in. We look down at the watch box, don’t see any second hands sweeping or watches set to the right time, and we’re running out the door with precious little time to wind and set something against our favorite reference time signal. It might be a first world problem, but it’s still a problem. Victorinox has just released a simple quartz powered field watch that might be a solid candidate if you find yourself in this highly specific state with any frequency at all. 

The Swiss Army Heritage collection is relentlessly simple, and somewhat refreshing because of it. Coming in at 40mm with a straightforward dial featuring easy to read Arabic numerals and a date window at the 6:00 position, these watches have the easy legibility and general unfussiness of a classic field watch, filtered through the Victorinox design language that many enthusiasts are likely to be already familiar with. This, in some ways, is a leaner and more discreet version of what Victorinox has been doing with the I.N.O.X. line for some time. And while Victorinox doesn’t make any over-the-top claims about durability and shock resistance for the Heritage collection as they do for I.N.O.X., it stands to reason that in practical terms these stainless steel watches with a minimum of moving parts will have no trouble standing up to the daily rigors of life, so long as you’re not regularly in the habit of laying your watch down in front of a cement mixer or tossing it off the roof of a tall building for no apparent reason at all. 

The Heritage collection offers an impressive amount of variety at launch, with dials in green, blue, black, and white, with each offered on a leather or textile strap, or a stainless steel bracelet (for the blue and black dials). Victorinox also offers each dial in a variant with a black PVD coated case, which changes the character of the watch considerably. Hands, numerals, and hour markers are all lume filled, and an interior 24 hour scale makes conversion to military time simple. Water resistance is 100 meters, and the watch is fitted with a sapphire crystal.

The key feature of this watch, though, is the movement, which is the Ronda 715, a reliable and tough Swiss quartz caliber that keeps the price point down and makes this watch a great potential fit for weekend wear in a large collection. It’s robust, attractive (especially in the DLC coated cases), and the price starts at just $300 (it tops out at $375 for models on a bracelet). Of course, there’s nothing stopping anyone from wearing this watch as a daily driver, and if that’s your intent, the value proposition here is even more obvious. For more information, check out the Victorinox website right here.