Three years with the Beast: A review of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph
Of the countless reviews posted on
Timezone, I reckon just about all of them were written shortly after the watch discussed was bought. Which is only natural - one is still excited about the new purchase and wants to share it with one's fellow Timezoners.
This was the case too when I reviewed my then new Audemars Piguet Offshore chrono nearly three years ago. Those of you who have submitted reviews probably also once in a while receive inquiries from people wanting to buy the same watch. I guess I must have "talked through" about a dozen guys who were in the market for the Offshore and many of their questions were similar. Nearly everyone wanted to know how the watch had held up over the years. As mine just celebrated it's third birthday on my wrist, I thought it was time to do another short review and comment how if fared in long-time wear.
Corrections and updates
My original
review contains a few errors which I'd like to update first.
Note: Back then, lavish photo-reviews
weren't the standard yet, a laconic "A picture of the watch can
be seen on AP's website" had to do.
the
chrono module used was designed by Lemania and is now produced by Dubois-Depraz.
It's not exclusive to AP but in fact used by many brands, often with a
different outlay of the helper dials
the watch
actually weighs only a mere 223 g and not 250 as I had reported
both the back and the bezel are 41 mm in diameter, the 46 mm I had mentioned include the crown guard, from lug to lug it measures 50 mm. If you think about it, it's not really that big by current standards
The Offshore has lost the crown of being the "largest and most expensive steel chronograph" - Franck Muller's King Conquistador beats it in both areas (stop press !: After a price increase, the Offshore is back on top, August 2001)
The material I identified as silicone used on the pushers, crown and gasket is actually a hi-tech rubber called Therban
I've
finally met someone other than a German pimp who wears the watch but the
sightings are still very rare.
Several
new versions have appeared in the mean time, a few of them as limited editions:
titanium
case and bracelet, grey dial with blue rings on the registers (regular
model)
steel
case and nylon strap, blue dial with Arabic numerals (regular model)
black
PVD-coated steel case and kevlar strap, black dial and yellow Arabic numerals
(End of Days 1000 piece limited edition)
platinum
case and bracelet, dial color unknown (limited edition of 25 pieces for a German
AP dealer)
steel case and bracelet, white dial (latest regular model)
steel
case with rubber coated bezel and rubber strap, dial either black or white
with arabic numerals and the new, wider waffle pattern AP introduced in
2000.
How
it's held up
I can't say that I submitted the watch to very heavy abuse, it's been frequently been worn
in the ocean and in the shower but otherwise only had to take what regular, daily wear brought. AP offers a free service a year after purchase but I
passed, not wanting to face being without the watch for a couple of weeks. But alas, now the time has come to do it as I regularly wear it in the water and
don't want to risk a leak.
Silicone
crown, pushers and gasket
A question
I've been frequently asked is how I think the silicone caps on the crown and
pushers will stand the test of time. I had had my doubts about these and the
idea to have them replaced by custom-made ones out of tantalum never left my
mind. To the naked eye, all the
silicone elements look virtually like new, under magnification, a slight
abrasion on the tips of the pushers is visible …
… and the gasket under the bezel is scarred in a few places.
I'd say
these rubber parts have proven themselves for use in watches and I wouldn't
hesitate to buy something like the Blancpain Concept series which uses them in
much more areas.
Case, bracelet and clasp
As the
Offshore is such a large watch, it can hardly be prevented that it gets banged
on a door or wall once in a while. Most of these knocks go directly to the
bezel and that is the part of my watch which has the most scratches and nicks.
As the top of the bezel has a matt finishing, they are less noticeable there …
... but are
far more visible on the edges where the polished surfaces begin. Rather
surprisingly, the white-gold hex-screw heads on the bezel are still very
smooth.
The
bracelet, except for the clasp which has a few scratches, is still in excellent
condition.
I don't
think sports watches have to be in pristine condition and actually prefer the
worn in look. But I'm convinced that could easily be polished up to "like
new" condition as none of the scratches are very deep.
Movement
and rate
After
keeping very good time for the first two years, it's lately been running quite
a bit fast, maybe around 20 seconds per day. It could well be that simply
demagnetizing it could improve the rate, I'm not much bothered by it and it will
certainly be taken care of at the upcoming service.
It's
debatable if a movement with modular construction really is suitable for such
an expensive watch from such a reputable brand like AP. I believe that at least
at the time the watch was designed in 1993, they really didn't have much other
choice. In any case, the chrono still performs very smoothly, the hands reset
to zero perfectly and it recently braved all abuse two die-hard WIS poured upon
it who desperately tried to make the second hand "jump".
Dial
and crystal
Three years
isn't a very old age for a watch so the dial hasn't started to fade. What I
only noticed on the photographs was the brown residue in the tritium of the
hour indices. This could just be a reflection and it's not visible by eye but
it could also be some kind of oxidation. As expected, the tritium still glows
strongly at night.
The
sapphire crystal is unscratched and the edge without any chipping but I'd still
prefer it to be absolutely flush with the bezel.
Summary
The Offshore has been my dream watch ever since I saw it pictured in a magazine many years ago. Since I have it, I've been wearing it almost exclusively and have lost much of the urge to buy any more watches (I've in fact only broken down twice for Panerais since I got it !). But the best of all, is that I've become good friends with many of the Singaporean Timezoners who back then helped me make it through one of the most nerve-wracking days ever.
A wonderful story about the Royal Oak by Andy Thurman
Andy
wrote the following piece for the Timezone Public Forum. I liked it so much that
I asked him if I could publish it on my website, he kindly agreed and here it is
!
I was in high school in Boston almost thirty years ago when I read some of the Boysie Oakes, John Gardner's cowardly James Bond take-off, series. In the first of them Oakes wore a Royal Oak: "the best watch in the world". It had just come out. Intrigued, I went to a fancy Boston jeweler and stared at one in the window. It was love at first sight. The very nice Omega my dad had bought me on a European vacation together a few years before suddenly seemed pedestrian to the point of being despicable (wish I still had the Omega).
Incredible success at a poker game while a sophomore in college in New York allowed me to buy one. I went in and plunked down full retail at Tourneau (yes, it was open that long ago). It was stolen from the visitors locker room at a swim meet at St. Francis College in Brooklyn my senior year, which is still one of the five worst things that ever happened to me.
Twelve years ago, after a succession of average watches, I finally replaced the Royal Oak with a steel/gold date model. In just got sent in for its first service last week, and I miss it almost like I miss my first wife, who died, even though I have a wonderful second wife and several wonderful watches. After I bought the second Royal Oak, I got interested in watches, and have gone through several. The Blancpain Monaco and the Patek 5085 were really nice, but, well, they weren't Royal Oaks.
So after I traded the 5085 for the Monaco, I traded the Monaco for a Offshore chrono on blue sharkskin, and the only time I've tried to trade it was for another Offshore, which turned out to be a fake. I'm pretty big (6'1, 260 lbs), so the Offshore is actually a better size for me than my regular Royal Oak. Between those two, my other half-dozen nice watches get very little wrist time, and I'm going to buy a gold jubilee edition for real dress up as soon as my bonus pays out.
The best watch in the world - just ask Boysie Oakes !
Andy
did what I would never dare to do: He took off the back of his Offshore and took
pictures !
Copright Andy Thurman 2001
