Rolex Day-Date 40 ‘President’ Watch Review

This aBlogtoWatch review is of the 18ct white gold Rolex Day-Date 40 reference 228239BLRP with the blue colored dial Early on in my career reviewing watches, I always found the Rolex President to be a challenging watch to categorize You can read my long-term review on the Rolex Datejust 41 watch here.

One source refers to an actual Rolex advertisement from 1966 where Rolex itself describes the Day-Date as "The President's Watch." At the time, US President Lyndon B Johnson wore a Day-Date, and prior to that so did President Dwight Eisenhower Our colleague and Rolex historian Jake Ehrlich discusses the "Presidential history" of Rolex and the Day-Date watch here.

What really benefits the Rolex Day-Date isn't the fact that Rolex has been producing it since 1956, but rather that Rolex has continued to improve upon it since 1956 For a long time the Day-Date was a 36mm wide watch until Rolex introduced the 41mm wide Day-Date II This model wasn't as refined/proportioned as a Rolex watch might otherwise be, so Rolex decided to release the current model being the Day-Date 40. Source