Oris ProPilot X Calibre 400 Review: A 1930s Pilot's Watch Becomes a 2025 Icon

Oris made its first watch for aviators, the original Big Crown, way back in 1938, and has been riffing on that ingenious and influential design ever since. Defined by its large, fluted winding crown, designed to be easy for gripping by hands in heavy pilot’s gloves, the modern Big Crown series — now hosting both the sporty ProPilot and the more elegant Pointer Date versions — has become a major pillar in the independent Swiss brand’s portfolio. In 2020, Oris launched Caliber 400, the first in-house automatic movement it had made in its long history, and debuted it inside a watch from its popular Aquis diver collection, following that model up with a Caliber 400 version of its other divers’ model, the retro-styled Divers 65. In 2022, Oris finally arranged a marriage of its oldest watch model — well, a descendant of it, anyway — with its newest exclusive movement, introducing the first ProPilot X Caliber 400 models. Now available in a variety of avant-garde colorways, these siblings to the larger, Sellita-equipped ProPilot Date models (example below) offer a marked contrast with their predecessors while still carrying the banner of the overall series. Here is what you should know about the ProPilot X, where it came from, and what Oris has been doing with it lately.

The Brand History:

Paul Cattin and Georges Christian founded Oris in 1904, in Hölstein, Switzerland, naming the company after a nearby brook. A maker of pocket watches and, by 1925, the increasingly popular wristwatches, Oris enjoyed a long period of growth and expansion throughout the following decades and even, for many years, made its own movements. Losing its independence during the consolidation years of the Quartz Crisis, Oris regained it in the 1980s, when a management buyout transformed the company and solidified its mission to make only mechanical watches going forward. Today, Oris has become a staple for value-conscious collectors of Swiss-made watches, particularly sport-oriented models. Among the brand’s modern pillars are the Big Crown Pointer Date, which traces its existence all the way back to 1938; the Aquis diver’s watch series in all its various incarnations; the vintage-influenced Divers Sixty-Five; and the aviation-centric ProPilot families that descended from the original Big Crown. In an apparent answer to critics, Oris’ most impressive achievement in recent years has been the release, in 2020, of its first modern, in-house automatic movement, Caliber 400, which holds an amazing 120 hours of power reserve. The latter invention plays an important role in identifying the ProPilot X family, as we will see. But let’s start with the watch’s exterior before delving inside.

The Case:

Comparing the ProPilot X to the Big Crown ProPilot models from which it spun off, one notices a stark difference in dimensions and weight. The core ProPilot Date models are almost all cased in stainless steel and measure 41mm in diameter, with more complicated versions coming in even larger — 44mm for the Day-Date models and a massive 47mm for the carbon-fiber-cased Altimeters. The ProPilot X, on the other hand, speaks to the contemporary trend toward modesty with a 39mm diameter and 12mm thickness. Spanning 46.9mm from lug to lug, this slimmed-down case is made from titanium rather than steel, which makes it not only lighter on the wrist but more scratch-resistant and hypoallergenic. The crown on the ProPilot X is also smaller (which could explain why Oris appears to be quietly excising the “Big Crown” from these models’ names), albeit still bearing the easy-grip fluting established in the pre-WWIi originals, and here protected by two protruding crown guards.

The latter element is another visual shorthand to differentiate the “X” models from the Big Crown ProPilots, which have no crown guards to smooth out the prominence of the crown. They are also an extension of the ProPilot X case’s more angular overall shape, which has an almost industrial-looking, brushed and sandbasted finish and still features the emblematic coin-edge texture on the sloping, stepped bezel, inspired, says Oris, by jet-engine turbines. The sapphire crystal is double domed, and treated with nonreflective coating on the inside, and the case boasts a water resistance of 100 meters.

The Dial:

Once again, a move toward streamlining and minimalism is apparent in the dial aesthetic of the ProPilot X. Whereas the Big Crown ProPilot models are recognizable for their use of ultra-legible Arabic numerals at the hour markers — a staple of classic pilot’s watches since the early 20th Century — the ProPilot X opts for long, slender baton indexes instead, with only the two dots above the double index at 12 o’clock offering a nod to the model’s aviation-inspired history. The outer edge hosts a simple printed minute track and the sword hands are stylishly similar, though not quite identical, to those on the Big Crown dials, The date has been moved from 3 o’clock to a subtly faceted window at 6 o’clock, balancing out the Oris logo at 12 o’clock for a harmonious symmetry. Super-LumiNova coats the hands and hour markers for easy legibility in the dark. 

The dials of the first wave of ProPilot X models have a subtly grainy texture, with color options of matte gray, dark blue, and a peachy salmon-orange. The date window on the gray dial features white numerals on black; the other two have black numerals on white. You also may have heard that Oris introduced some special editions of the ProPilot X in the past few years, including the Laser edition with an industry-first laser-finished dial, which has no date display at all; the green-dialed Kermit edition, which swaps out a rendering of Kermit the Frog for the date numeral on the first of every month; and that model’s follow-up, 2025’s Miss Piggy edition, which charts new territory for the model with a 34mm case, in steel rather than titanium, a pink dial, an outsourced automatic movement instead of Caliber 400, and a baguette-cut diamond at 12 o’clock. 

The Movement:

Perhaps the most substantial difference between the Big Crown ProPilot and ProPilot X can be found inside the watch, on display behind a sapphire exhibition caseback. Oris has long turned to the Sellita-based Caliber 751 and its derivatives, with their telltale Oris-modified red rotors, to power the former models, while the still-new Caliber 400 finds a home in the latter. Since the 1980s, Oris has made exclusively mechanical watches, but was sourcing the movements from companies like ETA and Sellita up until its 110th anniversary year of 2014, when it introduced Caliber 110, its first in-house movement in 35 years. (Prior to that, Oris had actually developed more than 200 of its own movements over its long history.) The manually wound caliber held a rare 10-day power reserve, and it was followed over the next few years by variations with small complications, all of them manually wound.

In 2020, Oris finally rolled out its first in-house movement with automatic winding, Caliber 400, which demonstrates the independent brand’s commitment to going above and beyond the call in the area of technical innovation and user-friendliness. Its two mainspring barrels hold a 120-hour (five-day) power reserve, its silicon parts contribute to an extreme magnetic resistance to 2,500 gauss (that’s more than the 1,000 gauss of the Rolex Milgauss, a watch noted for its antimagnetic properties), and its highly efficient gear train reduces energy consumption for a mainspring barrel torque of 85 percent, more than the 70 percent of most automatic movements. On top of all that, Caliber 400 is COSC-certified for chronometric performance and carries a 10-year warranty. The plates and bridges have a frosted finish and the rotor, notably, is not red like those built on outsourced ETA and Sellita movements but partially openworked and engraved with the Oris shield emblem.

The Bracelet:

The multifaceted titanium case, with its flat-topped, sloping lugs, integrates smoothly into a three-link bracelet made of the same material, with an array of matte and brushed finishes and screw-adjusted links. The bracelet’s large row of center links are flanked by smaller, slightly angled links along the edge that appear to give the bracelet a supple, articulated character. With a lug width of 19mm at its lug-connected end, it tapers to 16mm near the clasp. The clasp, an element held over from the more aviation-centered Big Crown models, is also special, designed somewhat in the manner of a seatbelt buckle on an airplane for one of the most secure closures of any strap or bracelet in the industry.

The Special Editions:

As noted briefly above, Oris has turned to its ProPilot X family to host a number of special editions, two of them ushering in a potentially lengthy partnership with a major entertainment franchise, the other premiering a new and unique dial-finishing technology. At Watches & Wonders 2023, Oris kept pace with heavyweights like Rolex and Patek Philippe in the media-buzz arena, not with a world-first complication but with the introduction of the ProPilot x Kermit Edition, a simple and smile-inducing version of its ProPilot X developed in cooperation with Disney’s Muppets franchise. The ProPilot X Kermit Edition features a bright green dial with a subtle yet playful addition in the date window: a smiling emoji of Kermit the Frog, which appears on the first day of every month — a date dubbed “Kermit Day” by Oris, which is meant to remind the wearer to “not take life so seriously.” Like its predecessors in the 39mm ProPilot X series, the watch is equipped with Caliber 400, showcased as per usual behind the clear caseback. 

Oris’s Muppets collaboration continued in 2025 with a more feminine-targeted follow-up to the successful Kermit model inspired by Kermit’s lady love, Miss Piggy. The first ProPilot X edition with a non-Caliber 400 engine — inside beats the Sellita-based Caliber 531, with a 42-hour power reserve — it is also the smallest execution yet of the design, with a “demure” case diameter of just 34mm. Also unlike the core models, and the Kermit, this watch’s movement is hidden behind a solid caseback — well, mostly solid, since it includes an aperture for a smiling illustration of Miss Piggy to seductively peek through.

In between these two high-profile Disney collaborations came a special edition of the ProPilot X that flew largely under the radar (aviation pun unintended) in comparison despite its impressive technical accomplishment. Introduced during Dubai Watch Week 2023, the ProPilot X Calibre 400 Laser Edition takes its name from its shimmering, color-changing rainbow dial, which Oris created in a special lasering process developed with a research lab associated with Switzerland’s prestigious ETH Zurich University. Made of titanium, the dial actually has no color pigments applied to it, only a laser-guided surface manipulation, aka “optical interference,” that splits the light into components, resulting in an iridescent blue-to-green-to-violet hue that changes constantly depending on the light angle. As mentioned, no date window disrupts this colorful tableau, and even the logo, indexes, minute track, and dial text are added in a laser process that renders them in a 3D look. Caliber 400 ticks behind this phenomenal dial, inside the ProPilot X’s traditional 39mm titanium case.

Pricing and Conclusions:

It is obvious that Oris is shooting for a different target with the ProPilot X than it traditionally has with the Big Crown ProPilot, both in terms of audience and genre. The titanium cases, coupled with the use of the in-house Caliber 400, contribute to a baseline price for the ProPilot X that is significantly higher, though most would agree still quite attractive for a watch at this level of design and finishing: $4,600, in comparison to the $2,500 you’ll pay for a steel Big Crown ProPilot on a bracelet ($2,200 on a leather strap). For the sake of being completist: the Kermit edition sells for $4,900, the Laser edition for $5,500, and the Miss Piggy for $3,200. 

With the newer model, Oris has also, indisputably, heavily de-emphasized the vintage pilot elements that defined its predecessor in favor of a more avant-garde execution that delves deeply into crowd-pleasing colorways and fashion-forward, understated styling. The result is a watch that has outgrown its tool-watch origins to fully embrace modernity and even fun. (Let’s be honest: there’s little to no chance that a World War II military pilot would have strapped on a 34mm watch with a hot-pink Miss Piggy dial for a combat mission.) While it’s still called a ProPilot, you’re not really getting a pilot’s watch here in the classic sense of the term, and for many prospective owners, that’s far from a major issue, because what you are getting is a sturdy, stylish everyday timepiece, with an in-house Swiss-made movement, with titanium, the red-hot metal of the moment, for both the case and bracelet, all still coming in under that daunting $5,000 ceiling. 

Calling all Oris fans in the Cleveland, Ohio area: the Teddy Baldassarre and Oris teams are co-hosting an event near Teddy's Crocker Park boutique on Saturday, May 17! You can sign up to join your fellow enthusiasts at Oris's famous traveling Airstream showroom by filling out the online form here or contacting us at events@teddybaldassarre.com.