Longines has announced a pair of new watches in their Spirit collection today, and taken together it feels like a fairly significant shift and update for the five year old line. When the Spirit watches launched in 2020, it represented Longines making an attempt to develop watches that put more of a balance on contemporary vs. vintage inspired divide, having spent years carving out a niche as one of the most tasteful reinterpreters of their own back catalog. The Spirit watches were an entirely new invention but still leaned into the brand’s natural heritage appeal, and impressed from the start with excellent finishing and build quality. As the collection expanded over the years, it’s grown full of under the radar sleepers, but a handful of little issues are always mentioned by admittedly picky enthusiasts when new products drop. At least some of those seem to have been addressed between these new releases, updated versions of the Spirit Pilot and Spirit Pilot Flyback.
We’ll look at the Spirit Pilot Flyback first, as it’s a genuinely surprising and unexpected evolution of an ambitious watch that Longines debuted just two years ago. Longines has a long history with chronographs, and flyback chronographs specifically, so the introduction of a new flyback chrono at a competitive price point (at launch it came in under $5,000 in steel) was a big deal. Unfortunately, the case was just enormous, coming in at 42mm in diameter and around 17mm tall. The case height, in particular, was a non-starter for many, turning what should have been an elegant throwback to the brand’s past into a weird mishmash of vintage design cues and contemporary tool watch proportions.
That’s been largely corrected with the new version of the watch, which is dramatically slimmed down. The diameter has been reduced to 39.5mm and the case is 13.4mm tall, which should provide for a much sleeker fit and a watch that’s more casually wearable day to day. Unsurprisingly, these new dimensions are a result of the use of a manually wound movement, the Longines calibre L792.4, the use of which makes us wonder why they ever thought this watch needed an automatic movement to begin with. The manually wound caliber (which has a column wheel mechanism and is COSC certified) is a truer representation of Longines’ chronograph history, and simply allows for the watch to be sized better.
At launch, the new Spirit Flyback is available on either a bracelet or strap, and you can have it in any color you’d like, as long as it’s black. It’s equipped with a rotating bezel in a countdown configuration, and Longines says the action of the rotation has been improved from previous versions of the watch. The Spirit Flyback retails for $5,350 on a strap, and $5,500 on a bracelet.
If a simpler, time only watch is more your speed, Longines has another Spirit launching today that might be more up your alley. The new Spirit Pilot is what the brand describes as a “streamlined” new version of the quintessential watch in the Spirit collection. The case measures 39mm, and Longines states that they’ve worked to improve the ergonomics for a more comfortable fit on the wrist. Perhaps more importantly, though, the dial has been rethought. There’s no date on this version, and you’ll notice that the five stars that to this point had been a symbol of the Spirit collection have been removed (ditto for the Flyback, in case you hadn’t noticed). This was always one of the more contentious issues among enthusiasts. My personal feeling was that it served as a calling card for the collection, and I didn’t find it particularly offensive. But many collectors disagreed, and I have to say that the cleaner, stripped down dial is quite appealing, even if it’s a little less distinctive.
The new Spirit Pilot runs on the Longines calibre L888.4, an automatic movement with 72 hours of power reserve, a silicon balance spring for magnetic resistance and overall durability, and COSC certification. The watch has a starting retail price of $2,700.
More information on the new releases in the Spirit collection can be found on the Longines website here.
Zach Kazan
2025-10-02 13:26:00