The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore – Unleash the Beast

Watch & Bullion

19 May 2016 | 2 min read

I love risk-takers. It is the risk-takers that drive us forward, and the risk-takers that we praise and loathe most. Risk-taking is unfortunately not very popular in the watch world. The best example of this is Rolex, who stubbornly produce the same batch of watches every year. Now this is not to say that Rolex doesn’t produce great watches, indeed they produce great timepieces as they manage to perfect their watches over the years. An outsider however would probably fail to notice the difference between a fifty year old Rolex and a brand new one at a glance.

There certainly lies a beauty in timelessness, however it always leaves one at the risk of crossing the border into boredom. Now I am aware this certainly is not the most popular of opinions, but ask yourself honestly, is a simple colour change to the bezel or a tiny tweak to a movement continuously housed in the same case really that groundbreaking?

It is for this reason that I can say that while I would personally never buy myself an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, I have the fullest respect and understanding for anyone that decides to do so. At 23 years of age I can’t think of another watch which has achieved so much in so little time, hitting the watch world like a comet and leaving a crater of success.

Onto today’s watch, which was lent to me by a good friend whom I remember encouraging back in the day to pick this over a blacked-out Hublot, and illustrating today why I would still without second doubt encourage its purchase two years down the road.

The dial has a richness to it which doesn’t just speak, but rather screams quality. What looks a touch too much with the tapisserie dial in pictures, is in fact a mesmerizing sight in person. Despite the thin numerals the lume is exceptionally strong. While I was at first skeptical of the magnifying glass underneath the crystal, upon snapping my rolex back on I cant begin to explain how much it makes sense.

Screaming quality completely silently on the other hand is the fact that the movement seems to not make a single sound.

While rubber on a five digit watch seems like an abstract concept, I can’t think of where or how it could have been done better. And this fits into the bigger picture of the watch. Audemars Piguet manages to strike an incredible balance in this piece. They took the risk and made something unconventional, with a groundbreaking design, a completely oversized case and new materials, and what can I say, the risk paid off.

If the watch industry is a musical gathering filled with classical musicians, then the Royal Oak Offshore is the rockstar, splitting the community, it’s uniqueness facilitating a success story which can’t be ignored. Rock on Audemars.