A chronograph dial in a light colour with contrasting dark sub-dials, resembling a panda's face. The reverse — dark dial with light sub-dials — is called a reverse panda.
The panda dial is a specific chronograph layout: a pale main dial, typically white or cream, paired with black or dark grey sub-dials for the running seconds, minutes counter, and hours counter. The contrast improves legibility of the chronograph functions at a glance, which is the practical reason the layout exists, though it's become as much an aesthetic signature as a functional one.
The reverse panda flips the scheme, a dark main dial with light sub-dials, and is generally considered the rarer, more understated of the two. Rolex's Daytona popularised the look most widely, but the panda layout predates it and appears across countless chronographs from many brands.
A panda dial has a light main dial with dark sub-dials; a reverse panda has a dark main dial with light sub-dials. Both exist purely to make the chronograph counters easier to read at a glance.
Rolex's Daytona is the most widely recognised panda-dial chronograph, though the layout appears on chronographs from many brands and predates the Daytona's popularity.
No — the contrast between the main dial and sub-dials was originally a legibility feature, making the chronograph's running counters easier to distinguish from the main time display at a glance.