Panerai PAM690 – A Hands On Review

Brett Harmon

Brett is an avid watch collector and Paneristi at heart. Along with collecting watches he loves photography, playing golf, and deep sea diving.

I am here to give an in depth and hands on review of the new Panerai PAM690, but I must first give you a short background of where my Panerai obsession began. My love for Panerai stems back to my very first piece, the PAM000 base. This piece is where it all started. From the 000 moving forward, I purchased the PAM372, PAM389, and PAM514. After wanting a little more diversity in my small collection, and of all three Panerai’s I was only left with one, the PAM389, which I wore on my wedding day back in 2014.

Fast forward to July 13, 2016. I’m standing in the presence of some of the biggest Panerai Execs not knowing what was going to be revealed that night. I was invited to my first ever VIP event hosted by Panerai & Panerai Central. To say the least, I was beyond excited, yet very antsy to see some of the new pieces that Panerai was debuting.

A quick side note; I had planned on adding a blue dial watch to my collection at some point in the year, but I never once anticipated it would be a blue dialed Panerai at that. Once I was able to get my hands on the PAM690 my love for Panerai was instantly reignited. As I said before, I had thinned out my collection of Panerai’s down to one to have a little more diversity, I even went as far as telling myself I would only have one watch per brand in my collection, well that changed that evening.

The PAM690 is the first of its kind, a 1940 style case with a mesmerizing sun-brushed blue dial, vintage indices, gold hands and Assolutamente Ponte Vechio strap with the Officine Panerai logo stamped into a beautiful tan leather. The stainless steel case measures 47mm, has a 26mm lug width, 21 jewels and powered by the P.3000 manual wind movement with 3 days of power reserve that is used in the iconic PAM372.

After taking delivery of the watch about 2 weeks ago, I must say I am still ecstatic about it. Yes, it’s a 47mm but the watch sits nicely on my 7″ wrist. The coloring of the dial and the vintage gold accents just go so nicely together. The layered “sandwich” dial gives a lot of depth to the piece. The domed sapphire crystal can really bring out an amazing display of “blues” with sun beaming off the dial. I must say that I don’t have any dislikes about the piece, but I am very partial to Panerai, others might find small dislikes, I’ve yet to hear anything negative though. Everything seems to flow seamlessly on this watch and I am looking forward to incorporating this piece into my weekly rotation PERMANENTLY. For those of you who know me personally know that some watches wont make it more than a week or two in my collection but I can honestly say that this piece has found its home.

This piece is a boutique edition and limited to 500 pieces worldwide and retails for $9,200 USD. I recommend if you are at all interested in the PAM690 that you make your way to the nearest Panerai Boutique to either view and or purchase the piece before they are sold out.