While the cases look good, they are not as fancy as those on higher-end watches and more expensive Swiss Army models. The cases aren’t steel as I mentioned, and have mineral versus sapphire crystals. But again, for a watch like this that is fine. They are however water resistant to 100 meters. The dials are quite attractive being gray with a sort of deep vertical brushed finishing. The hour indicators are slightly recessed and filled with luminant. There is more luminant on the properly-sized hands, which despite the fact that they don’t need to be skeletonized, still look very attractive. I think that is because the hands balance well with the stencil-like font used for the hour indicators. It wouldn’t be a Swiss Army watch without a scale for 24 hour format time.

A lack of minute indicators gives the dial a clean look. Consider the entire dial “Panerai-inspired” but with Victorinox Swiss Army DNA. The dials also have a date window, which sticks out a bit as it is white. A bit of color exists with the orange seconds hand. As you can see, there is the three-hand and chronograph version of the Original. The dial of the Original Chronograph is basically the same as the three-hand version, with the difference of the three sub dials. Inside each of the watches is a Swiss quartz movement.

For these versions of the Original, the three-hand is a standard model (ref. 241593), while the Original Chronograph is a limited edition. It is also called the Original LE (ref. 241594), though we aren’t sure how many pieces it is limited to. Now there is one interesting extra feature that comes with the limited edition model. It is a cup-style watch guard that buttons closed over the case. When closed it does look a bit silly. I believe it is a throwback to some of those moulded watch guards of the past. Perhaps some of them were meant to protect against cracked crystals and light reflections off the crystal (for stealthy mission). Yeah, it can be removed, and yeah, it is an oddly cool weird feature that you are not likely to wear on your watch very often.

For the money these are really great watches due to the style and the fact that they are both original (no pun intended) looking, but also conservatively designed sport watches. Also, the premium for the 2013 Victorinox Swiss Army Original watches with the bund straps is only about $25 – $45 over the standard models. Price for the Swiss Army Original three-hand is $350 and the Original Chronograph LE is $495. swissarmy.com