Circula ProTrail Watch Review

Strapping on the Circula ProTrail I can already tell that this watch is right up my street. It has a really strong field watch aesthetic with a go-anywhere, do-anything, adventure vibe that I love. In fact, holding it side by side with my own Seiko Alpinist 1959 Re-Creation I think they make for a really nice two-watch collection. They both occupy that tool watch space but with subtly different styles, the Seiko leaning towards elegance and the Circula ProTrail focusing more on a bold, rugged style.

A lot of that ruggedness comes from the case, which comes in at 40mm of sandblasted stainless steel. The design itself is facetted with relatively short lugs that gives it a compact profile, wearing smaller than its 40mm dimensions suggest. As for the height, it is noticeable at 13.4mm including the crystal, but that’s by no means egregious and it doesn’t help that I’m putting it in direct comparison with the 12.9mm Seiko. Specs-wise the ProTrail’s case is water resistant to 150m and magnetic resistant to 80,000 A/m thanks to a soft iron cage.

The dial has a multi-layered display with a raised hour ring with railway minute track and a recessed central disc with 24-hour scale. I like the colourway too, a combination of black, white and grey with orange accents. There are alternative colourways available in sand, brown and full black, but this is my favourite because the high contrast keeps the Arabic numerals nice and legible while the dash of colour adds a lot of character. I particularly like the orange tip of the seconds hand.

Undoing the sailcloth strap (which is really comfortable) and flipping the watch over reveals a lovely steel caseback. It’s been engraved with a topographic map showing the lines of elevation of some hills – Circula don’t specify which hills they are and without an OS map of the whole of Germany to hand, I can’t identify whether it’s a real section of map or a fictional engraving. Regardless, a nice touch is that it also has some walking routes engraved across it, highlighting the ProTrail’s adventurous nature. Overall, it’s one of the coolest closed casebacks I’ve seen recently.

The caseback protects the movement that’s housed inside, which is the Sellita SW200-1 Elaboré automatic movement. While it may be a workhorse Sellita movement, it’s one of the higher spec versions with a frequency of 28,880 vph, an accuracy of -5/+7 seconds per day (adjusted in Pforzheim by Circula), and a power reserve of approx. 41 hours.

As for price, we see again that the Seiko Alpinist is an apt comparison: the Circula ProTrail is €899 (approx. £780) compared to the Seiko’s £720. That makes the Circula a serious value proposition, which is exactly what you want from a field watch. Having spent the better part of a week with this watch on my wrist, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t considering making a purchase.