Leong Wong 17 December 2017

Audemars Piguet dives in with style. 

Given the jolt of colours that greets us in Audemars Piguet’s new Royal Oak Offshore Diver collection, one can’t help but draw parallels between this line-up and its iconoclastic predecessor, the Royal Oak. While each bear differences in their makeup – the Royal Oak Offshore range is essentially a sportier and chunkier version of the Royal Oak – both collections are cut from the same cloth; designed to disrupt the status quo with off-kilter takes on baller-style athleticism.

Like how the original Royal Oak raised eyebrows when it was launched in 1972, with its then-exorbitant price tag of 3,500 Swiss francs for a steel watch and its unusual octagonal bezel design, the Royal Oak Offshore Diver pushed the limits of how an underwater tool watch ought to look and perform.

This year’s editions take their cue from 2016’s hot-selling multi-coloured chronograph models, which came in bold and bright hues of yellow, orange, lime green and blue. The new time-only models are dressed in equally eye-catching colours, available in shades of blue, white, orange, yellow and lime green, the object of this reviewer's affection. 

Audemars Piguet has christened the hue “fizzy lime green” and the watch absolutely bubbles with personality. Some might think that it is too loud but we say look elsewhere if subtlety is your poison. Beyond the eye-snapping colour, however, this watch is a Royal Oak Offshore thoroughbred. Design elements such as the Mega Tapisserie pattern, applied indexes, and of course, the octagonal bezel with exposed screws are iconic and will be familiar to fans of the collection.

Despite the watch’s club-friendly flamboyance, the Royal Oak Offshore Diver is up to the task if you want to take it for a dive. Driven by the in-house automatic Calibre 3120, the watch is water resistant to 300m. The blue inner rotating bezel with green markers, while aesthetically ostentatious, serves a very important purpose of setting and measuring remaining dive times. Elsewhere, the rubber-clad crowns are screw-locked for extra protection and water resistance, and to cap things off, a glare-proofed sapphire crystal ensures maximum legibility.

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Leong Wong

Editor

A familiar face in Malaysia's horological publishing scene, Leong has been involved in lifestyle journalism since the mid-1990s. Besides watches, he takes a keen interest in cars and men's fashion.