Hands on with the Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton – on-trend and on my shopping list

It's no secret that the best watches on the market are always linked to trends. With the brands so closely tied to the world of fashion, it was always inevitable, and as the winds change, so too do the collective likes and dislikes of the watchmaking industry.

Still, that does make for some absolutely fabulous watches. Right now, some of the hottest things on offer are integrated bracelet sports watches and skeletonised dials.

Enter Zenith. At LVMH Watch Week, the brand unveiled its new Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton, taking the Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph from last year's Watches and Wonders and stripping away some of the dial.

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The watch features a stainless steel case which sits 42mm wide. That houses an iconic El Primero movement. For the uninitiated, the El Primero is the godfather of chronograph movements. It used to power the Rolex Daytona, and is a serious bit of kit.

Here, you'll find the classic 5Hz beat rate for ultra smooth seconds hand motion. There's also around 60 hours of power reserve on offer, which is great for a watch with such a high beat rate.

Hour and minute hands are mounted centrally, while a small seconds register sits at the nine o'clock position. The central seconds hand is for the chronograph – as are the three- and six o'clock sub dials – and is the source of the real magic here.

You'll find a 1/10th of a second chronograph, meaning that central seconds hand completes a full rotation every ten seconds, rather than every 60. I've used it on countless watches and it never ceases to feel amazing.

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Strapping this one onto the wrist felt really spectacular. Broadly speaking, my feeling were similar to when I tried the non-skeletonised version – it's chunky, but in a really good way. You feel the heft of a watch like this as a reassurance of its quality, rather than a detriment.

Going into this, I was slightly concerned about the case size. 42mm is on the larger side for my wrist anyway, but the addition of an integrated bracelet could have made this unmanageable. Those tend to extend the length of a watch case, which can cause it to drape way over the width of a wrist.

There was none of that here, though. The Zenith bracelet is fantastic for a number of reasons, but the way it drapes over your wrist is one of my favourite. It's ultra-comfortable. In fact, the whole design was only mildly let down by its thickness for me. It was just a smidge top-heavy, and I'd fear catching it in daily use.

The dial itself is fantastic here. It's a tasteful example of skeletisation, which feels like you're enjoying a glimpse of a forbidden world rather than looking like someone has looted anything which wasn't strapped down. I could lose hours just staring at the many various layers and contrasting edges – it's a work of art.

That theme continues when you flip it over, too. The watch movement here is simply sublime, with a beautiful star-shaped rotor which reminds you of exactly which brand is adorning your wrist.

At £13,900 (approx. $17,350 / AU$27,795) it might seem silly to call this watch good value. But that's exactly what I'm going to do.

See, the box standard, non-skeletonised Defy Skyline Chronograph is not much cheaper than this. That places this at a reasonable point of upgrade – you could buy the standard model, but tack on a little more cash and you'll get something altogether more special.