Circula ProTrail Owner Review : Elegant, fascinating and essential

Circula is a small German family brand that was resurrected a few years ago in the third generation. The models are quite well-crafted and there is an interesting community spirit around the brand. Customers are consulted on the choices made for the development of new models. The Protrail is a military field watch released in 2022. It comes in 3 versions. Sand, Black and limited edition Black old radium. It is the latter that seduced me with its simplicity, going so far as to reduce the numbers to the four essential ones, its extreme readability in all conditions. The case is quite massive (40mm in diameter and 12 millimeters thick for 100g with a leather/fabric strap) due to the anti-magnetic shielding. But the watch also knows how to be forgotten, it is black and even more than black, its color always fascinates me. It may be because it comes from the Black Forest or because it has a DLC (Diamond-like-Carbon) coating that gives it robustness. Depending on the lighting conditions and the distance at which you stand, you can see the circular streaks in the center of the dial, which add a nuance in keeping with the brand name, which sometimes make you think of an old vinyl, a Chuck Berry record that you would put on the turntable. And there, daydreaming about old memories, you tell yourself that time is definitely passing and that you are already old. Chuck Berry is already dead and we don't play vinyl anymore, we are in another era. Making people dream of another era while being firmly anchored in the 21st century is the bet of Cornelius Huber who was able to resuscitate Huber & Co in Pforzheim at the time when he himself became a father. This unclassifiable watch that I bought for a reason that I did not understand myself, I like it a lot, what is more this series limited to 99 copies and numbered and by the greatest of chances I came across my favorite number. The movement is a Sellita SW 200-1 Elaboré (COMPATIBLE ETA 2824), it has a discreet but clear noise at 4Hz. There is no date, so as not to compromise the antimagnetic shielding. Of course there are many Field watches that have a long military experience with which this watch is not really comparable, and yet it brings an air of freshness so pleasant.