Delma Heritage: an Understated, Elegant Dress Watch with a Fair Price

Looking for a dress watch that is as functional as it is stylish (and fairly priced too)? The Delma Heritage might the right pick for you. Delma is a family-owned company based in Lengnau, near Biel in Switzerland. If the brand is mostly known today for its sport and dive watches, it has produced a number of dress watches in its (almost) 100 years of existence. Case in point: presented during the Basel Watch Week earlier in 2018, the Delma Heritage is inspired by historical models of the brand.

The first thing to catch your eye with the Delma Heritage is its clean, 1960s-inspired design. Its dial is softly curved at its edges, which enhances its character and creates elegant and harmonious volumes. The hour markers are curved too. The tip of the seconds hand is bent by the Delma watchmakers to embrace the curvature of the dial. Featuring a sunray finish, it comes in different colours: silvered, black, blue or brown. The date is indicated at 6 o’clock. Overall, it looks very pleasant. The only topic of debate might be the date. The usefulness of a date window cannot be denied but many prefer the clean design of a no-date dress watches. To each his own.

At 43mm in diameter, the round case features elegant curves and dynamic, elongated lugs and is modernly sized – on the contrary to its overall retro design. The sapphire crystal is nicely curved. It comes in steel or in yellow or pink gold PVD-coated steel. Despite the rather large diameter for a dress watch, it wears comfortably and has just enough weight and presence to let you know it is there. Turning the watch over the exhibition caseback allows a view of the automatic movement. Water-resistance is of 100m.

The Delma Heritage is powered by the automatic ETA-2824 calibre. This ubiquitous, reliable workhorse will be a precise ally for the years to come. It indicates hours, minutes, seconds and the date. Operating at 28,800 vibrations per hour, it has a 38-hour power reserve. It is decorated with perlage and the rotor is engraved with the brand’s logo.

The Delma Heritage is worn on a leather strap secured with a folding buckle. In the end, the Delma Heritage features most of the trappings of a stylish dress watch, with a domed dial, a curved crystal or a see-through caseback. Price is set at CHF 950 for the steel versions and CHF 990 for the PVD-steel versions. This makes the Delma heritage a worthy pick if you are looking for an affordable mechanical dress watch. For more information, please visit www.delma.ch.