Panerai renews and upgrades the Luminor Marina

Intro

2025 marks a turn-around year for Panerai. A new Luminor Marina collection breaks cover, kicking off a development strategy to pimp up Panerai’s most distinctive model and bring it partially back to its roots. New materials take centre stage, along with improved performance, to align with a proper Paneristi’s expectations. Whether this is a one-off project or the dawn of a new era for the brand, time will tell.

New materials

A Panerai watch embodies the three-hand diver’s watch in steel, and the brand has focused on raising its standards. Each new model now adopts AISI 316LVM—1.4441 steel, a more refined variant of the most commonly used AISI316L, ensuring superior resistance to corrosion and pitting phenomena.

Panerai’s answer to 904L is no longer a Rolex exclusive but a growing group of alloys, including Omega and Grand Seiko, whose main goals are enhanced resistance and PREN number. An additional grade 5 titanium alloy model joins the steel models.

The P980 caliber

The new Luminor Marina models house a new self-winding calibre, coded as P980, and built upon the base P900 platform. According to the specs, a P980 includes most features missing on a P900, like the “hacking seconds” mechanism and improved accuracy, thanks to a standard six-position testing procedure.

Overall, the effort to improve engineering on many levels brings Panerai back to the excellence it deserves while reducing the technological gap between core models and Haute Horlogerie pieces. In contrast, we don’t like a see-through case back.

This is especially true when the brand promotes a water resistance performance well beyond the 500-meter rating. Also, according to Panerai, a P980 won’t stand out in decoration while ensuring a 12% slimmer case and a 15% lighter than the outgoing models. In brief, thumbs up on dramatically improving the proposition inside and out while slimming down the standard 1950-inspired 44 mm case.

The new bracelet is gorgeous.

We can’t share our final thoughts before wrapping each new model around our wrist, yet there’s one plus we cannot start highlighting. It is the re-engineered Luminor bracelet in steel, whose design mimics the patented protection bridge. It might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but the case’s thickness reduction helps make it an option to consider, especially with the addition of the Quick Length micro-adjustment mechanism, which allows a 2 mm extension on each side.

Thanks to the PAM Click™ release system, you can now swap the leather strap for a rubber strap or a bracelet on each steel model.

The titanium version has a distinctive olive green dial, a matching dark green suede strap, and a replacement dark green rubber strap. A titanium bracelet will also be in the works.

(Photo credit: Panerai)

Giovanni Maria Di Biase @Horbiter®