Meet the new ZENITH DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli II

Enter the DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli II, a watch that looks like it lost a fight with a thundercloud and came out cooler for it.

The Backstory, Briefly

Zenith already gave us a DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli in steel and yellow gold. Nice watch. Shiny. Sensible, even. This is not that watch. For round two, Zenith stripped away the polish and armored the whole thing in forged carbon, because apparently someone in Le Locle looked at "elegant" and said "what if we made it look like it survived something."

Limited to 25 pieces, the DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli II is built on contrast, and we mean that literally. You've got dark, matte, almost violent-looking carbon and titanium on the outside, and then blazing lapis lazuli counters set into the dial like someone smuggled a piece of the night sky through customs. One material is engineered in a lab for brute performance. The other was formed by literal geological pressure over millions of years. They should not get along. They absolutely do.

The Face of the Thing

The 45mm case doesn't reflect light so much as absorb it and refuse to give it back, which only makes the lapis lazuli counters pop harder. Those natural pyrite inclusions in the stone catch the light differently depending on the angle, throwing little flecks of gold across the dial like the watch is quietly showing off without asking permission. Yellow gold-plated indexes and Super-LumiNova keep things legible, because a watch this dramatic still has to actually tell time.

The layout is properly stacked: central hours and minutes, small seconds at 9 o'clock, a 30-minute chronograph counter at 3, a 60-second counter at 6, and a chronograph power reserve indicator up at 12. And then there's the party trick. The central chronograph hand completes a full rotation every single second. It's the kind of detail you notice once and then can't stop watching, like a hypnotic little blue-and-gold pinwheel spinning away at your wrist.

What's Actually Ticking In There

Under all that visual noise sits the El Primero 9004, a movement built around two separate escapements because one clearly wasn't enough drama for this watch. One escapement runs at a standard 5 Hz (36,000 VpH) to keep regular time. The second screams along at 50 Hz (360,000 VpH), dedicated entirely to the chronograph function. That's what lets this thing measure elapsed time down to 1/100th of a second, still the only mechanical chronograph in regular production that can pull that off. You get a 50-hour power reserve for everyday timekeeping and 50 minutes of chronograph runtime, which is plenty unless you're timing something truly unhinged. Flip it over and the sapphire case back shows off a star-shaped oscillating weight with a satin-brushed finish, because even the parts you rarely see got the memo about looking sharp.

Straps and Sensibility

The watch ships with a black rubber strap and folding clasp, plus a black high-performance Velcro strap for backup, both swappable through Zenith's interchangeable strap system built right into the case back. So yes, this is a limited edition art piece, but it's also genuinely wearable and water resistant to 20 ATM.

Priced at 32,900 CHF (roughly 36,800 EUR or 37,100 USD), the DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli II is available now through Zenith boutiques, online, and authorized retailers. Only 25 exist, so if you're on the fence, that fence has a very short shelf life.