Now, this was taken to another level with the Royal Oak Offshore.It was large and brash, and purists who watched it at Basel back in 1993 screamed the Royal Oak was desecrated — likely the same men and women who jumped out to about the original Royal Oak desecrating luxury watches generally. Truth be told, the Offshore was a bold move by Audemars Piguet, but today we all know how well it has repaid. Today, the Royal Oak and Royal Oak Offshore are Audemars Piguet’s best-selling collections — basically synonymous with the manufacturer itself, which obviously isn’t a good thing, but we’ll leave that discussion for a different time.
Nicknamed the Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph “Novelty”, the 44mm version of Audemars Piguet‘s octagonal sports chronograph was not the focus of the new Royal Oak models unveiled at SIHH 2017, but nonetheless got a facelift with new dials (while keeping everything else the same). More significantly, a new version in titanium was added – the lightweight alloy’s debut for the “Novelty”.
The Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph 44mm in titanium (ref. 26400IO.OO.A004CA.01) features a contrasting black ceramic bezel, and paired with a dark grey dial as well as a grey rubber strap.
The facelifted Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph in pink gold (ref. 26401RO.OO.A002CA.02) now has a black dial with pink gold accents. The hands, hour markers, chapter ring as well as printed text are all in pink gold, giving the dial greater contrast compared to the earlier model, which was white on black.
And the last of the trio is the “Novelty” in black ceramic (ref. 26405CE.OO.A002CA.02). Unlike the earlier version that had a black and silver colour scheme, the new ceramic chronograph has a black dial with pink gold accents, as well as a touch of dark blue. The hands, hour markers and dial text are pink gold, while the chronograph hands are tipped in dark blue.
As before, the trio are all powered by the calibre 3126/3840, which is AP’s in-house automatic calibre topped with a chronograph module made by Dubois-Depraz.
Price and availability
The titanium model is priced at SFr27,500, while the black ceramic is SFr29,000. And the pink gold is SFr41,550.