Alpina Startimer Pilot Heritage Automatic GMT Review

Before we start, I have to be honest, I was looking at purchasing an Oris Chronoris when I happen to stumble upon the Alpina Startimer Pilot Heritage GMT watch.

I was aware of Alpina Watches and have always admired their Alpiner and Seastrong collection, but it was their Startimer collection, specifically their Startimer Pilot Heritage Automatic range of watches that caught my eye. When it comes to Swiss watchmakers, Alpina may not be the first brand that comes to mind, but it should!

Famous for its red triangle (mountain) signature, Alpina Watches is a fine watchmaking manufacturer based in Geneva, Switzerland. Founded by Gottlieb Hauser in 1883, their watchmaking history spans more than 140 years. Since their comeback in 2002, Alpina have launched six new in-house developed and engineered calibers, the Tourbillon, Regulator, World Timer, Small Date, Flyback Chronograph and Heritage Manufacture, ensuring their rightful place among the small and select group of Swiss watch manufacturers that completely develop and produce their own calibers in-house.

With all that preamble out of the way, I can finally get to the meat of this review, the Alpina Startimer Pilot Heritage Automatic GMT watch (model: AL-555DGS4H6).

The pedigree of the Startimer collection goes all the way back to the 1920’s, when Alpina started developing pilot watches to accompany aviators to help them navigate in those early days. Alpina's current Startimer collection stays faithful to the spirit of its predecessors and presents clean and legible dials enhanced by traditional oversized crowns, which I absolutely love!

This ‘Dark Grey’ Startimer Pilot Heritage Automatic GMT impresses immediately, with its boxed scratch resistant sapphire crystal protecting the sunburst dark grey dial with its applied silver indexes, SLN treatment and its beautiful silver internal GMT turning bezel. The polished white and black colour hour and minutes hands, the striking orange second hand, and of course the central GMT disc all demand attention.

The Startimer Pilot Heritage is housed in a throwback stainless steel barrel case which measures 42mm side-to-side and approximately 45mm lug-to-lug, but feels bigger, likely due to the lugless design and rectangular/barrel case shape. The watch is quite comfortable when you put it on, with the case resting proportionately on my 7” wrist. Where I did find an issue was with the dramatically tapered padded leather strap – the strap is well made and suits the watch well, coupled with the Alpina signed pin-buckle that doubles as the first keeper. However, the tapering and the stiffness in the padding of the strap makes it tricky to get the watch to sit right on my 7” wrist. I like wearing watches low on the wrist, but I couldn’t get this to sit right due to the stiff padding which may have also been exacerbated by the lugless design of the case. I’d think that anyone with a wrist size smaller than 6.5” would find this perfectly comfortable. Anyway, to negate this issue, I have ended up wearing the watch a tad higher on the arm.

Back to the case, Alpina have done an excellent job making it interesting, with radial brushed surfaces flanked on either side by a sizable, polished chamfer, then brushed case sides. These varying stainless steel textures result in the watch playing nicely in light. The two crowns on the Startimer Pilot Heritage are in the style of a compressor case, with the first at 4 o’clock, which is signed and handles the winding and time setting, while the second, at 2 o’clock, has a nice, checkered texture pattern on it and deals with rotating the internal GMT bezel. The only complaint with the crowns is that the one at 4 o’clock is not a screw-down. It is also worth mentioning that the internal GMT marker bezel doesn’t click as it’s turned (with the 2 o’clock crown), so you really must pay close attention before tightening it back down.

I like open case-backs to view the movement, but this Alpina’s case-back is closed and signed with Alpina’s mountain and airplane logo indicative of the Startimer series. The perimeter of the case back has all the usual particulars of the watch, including the 10ATM water resistance level. It may not be an open case-back, but it is so well executed that we can forgive Alpina on this occasion.

And now to the heart of the watch, its movement. The Startimer Pilot Heritage has the AL-555 movement inside, a Sellita-derived automatic movement that features an independently adjustable local hour hand and true GMT. The watch allows you to set the GMT disc to your local time zone, then adjust the hour hand on the fly as you enter new time zones. This makes this GMT watch much easier to use and operate as you travel (especially from West to East).

This watch struck me with its beautiful vintage-retro styling and unique GMT complication. But more than just its good looks, the Startimer Pilot Heritage GMT has proven itself as a great timekeeper and thus has earned the right to being first in line in my daily watch rotation.