By Harlan Chapman-Green
SIHH 2017 is nearly over, most of the journalists that were rushing around to get to their next meeting or were sat down enjoying the food have cleared off and gone home, leaving SIHH to open its doors to the public for the first time on its last day. One of those companies that fits neither category is Audemars Piguet, which got cosy with the likes of Vacheron Constantin and Cartier. Today they showed us their new super duper colourful and extremely eye-catching Royal Oak Offshore Diver watches.
Before they only used to be in plain old black and steel. Last year the Diver Chronograph came in these fruity colours and this year the simple three handed date Diver follows in the same way, as well as adding a stark white and blue option in as well. The different colours (white, blue, orange, green and yellow) all except the white one feature a blue inner bezel that’s operated via the second crown at 10 O’clock. Each of the new watches also has the same colour on the rubber strap that it comes presented with, though at some point I would be inclined to find a bracelet for this one and put it on there, if you wanted a slightly more conservative look for your bright sunbeam yellow Audemars Piguet diver that is.
The stainless steel cases on these watches remain at a decent 42mm in diameter with increased thickness over the more classical Royal Oak. Each watch is also designed to be at least 300m water resistant, making it so much more than just some fad by a haughty Swiss watch company. Inside the watch is Audemars Piguet’s automatic winding in-house made calibre 3120 movement which is a robust and reliable tool featuring the same double anchor bridge and free-sprung balance setup that you’d find in a Submariner (these are two of the reasons as to why they are so durable over the years). These watches also share the same open caseback of the black diver so the viewer can clearly see the hand built and finished movement with the lovely golden rotor hovering just slightly above it. An interesting fact, Audemars makes use of ceramic ball bearings inside the base of the rotor, making an efficient and sealed-for-life (effectively) connection between the oscillating mass and the ticking movement.
There isn’t any set pricing for these new watches as of yet, but the black model sells for around $19,000 when bought new, so it’s likely these will be the similarly priced if not the same. For more info, please visit audemarspiguet.com
