Let me start this off by saying thanks to Hanhart watches, as they have been so kind to let me get this piece for a hands-on review. This review is not sponsored. I am not getting paid to review this piece; it is only done for my amusement and for informational purposes. With that out of the way, let’s get into the article.

I have been lucky enough to receive the new Hanhart 415 ES reverse panda chronograph for review. For the past few days, I have been using the watch to gauge its performance, looks, and quality. I will give you my findings and my opinions in this hands-on review.

Let’s start with a history lesson. We just made a full-fledged article about the history of Hanhart, which I will link here, so we won’t go into too much detail. But let’s go over the Cliff Notes.

In 1856, Johann Adolf Hanhart was born in the small town of Diessenhofen. 26 years later, he announced the start of Hanhart in the local paper in 1882. 20 years later, in 1902, they moved to the Black Forest in Germany, and Johann’s youngest son, Willhelm Julius Hanhart, was born. Willhelm leads the company after his father’s passing in 1932. Under Wilhelm’s control and a shift away from the retail side of the business, the company went through a golden period. In 1938, the company made its first chronograph after a successful 14 years of producing stopwatches.

In wartimes and the following years they made chronographs and watches for Germany and France and in the post war years they were extremely fast in reaching the pre war heights of the brand. In the quartz crisis the brand adapted brilliantly and their quartz movements were selling by the millions.

Now under CEO Felix Wallner the brand has focused on making great timepieces at an affordable price. The designs are timeless if a bit boring at times, the movements are primarily made by Selita and ETA, many of the movements are however modified, the modifications happen in-house and with help from La-Joux Perret and Dubuis Depráz.

This ensures the watches are reliable, accurate, affordable, and easy to service with tried and tested calibers. What pleases me most when it comes to their watches is that they are not afraid of any type of movement, be it quartz, automatic or in the case of the 415 ES chronograph, manual wound.

Now to the watch itself self as you can see in the description of the watch and in pictures, this is a chronograph in the Reverse Panda colorway, in other words, it has a black dial with white subdials to contrast. The design of the watch is extremely simple and timeless. You could have this design in any period of the wristwatch era, and it would not look out of place. With its timelessness and rugged elegance, you have a watch you can not get tired of, as it is just good-looking.

The size of the watch follows today’s trend of perfectly fitting watches; it is not too big and it is not too small, it is in that sweet spot when it comes to chronographs at only 39mm in diameter. Diameter is not all; lug to lug is only 46 mm, and with the lug width being 20mm, it means you have an extremely well-balanced and cohesive watch. My one gripe when it comes to size is that it has the manual wound Selita SW 510-M movement makes the watch a bit thick when it comes to manual wound movements, sitting at just over 13 mm in thickness. Now, is that a normal thickness for hand-wound chronographs? Yes, it is a very standard thickness, and yes, I am nitpicking. I need to say something not positive about the watch.

Now if there is one thing I can say about this watch that feels a bit off is the weight, it feels very top heavy, that means that you have to wear it really tight in order for it not to droop down your wrist. Thankfully Hanhart has that covered as instead of a fine spring pin adjustment in the clasp or half links in the bracelet you have a micro adjustment.

The bracelet also has a small feature I wish more watch brands would use and that is screw pins instead of Tube pins like Seiko use or Split pins like most brands use. Screw pins automatically gains a watch points in my rankings as they are sturdy, easy to adjust and they give me a great sense of stability, there is a reason Rolex and Tudor use those pins.

Now to wrap this up, should you buy this watch? For me, the answer is a yes. If you need a good chronograph in your collection but don’t want to break the bank, this is a fantastic choice. Now it is likely that if you have a chronograph, then this will not do anything for you as the design despite being timeless it is on the safer and duller end of the spectrum, and that’s okey, the watch knows what it is and it’s not trying to be anything else. If you want to look into buying the watch I will leave a link to it here.

Price: 9/10

Design 8/10

Heritage: 10/10

Quality: 9/10

Overall: 10/10