SIHH 2015 – Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver ref. 15710 – hands-on with live photos, specs & price

The Royal Oak, Audemars Piguet’s best seller, is used (and abused for some watch lovers) for many editions, going from the classical and faithful Ultra-Thin 15202ST, to bulky chronographs or a sumptuous Grande Complication. It’s even the base used by AP for their R&D watches, as the Acoustic Research Concept proves it. We told you: use and abuse. It is thus totally understandable that the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak comes also in a diving edition. For this 2015 edition of the SIHH, the brand updated it with new features and colors. Here is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver ref. 15710.

Already introduced in several materials – white ceramic, forged carbon or stainless steel – the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver is very well known from the AP collectors. As the base recipe was not that bad, AP chose to only update one of its best-seller, just like they did in 2014 with the Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph. Using the Rolex touch, instead of completely changing the face of an icon, Audemars prefers to improve some details and to keep a similar overall partition.

Let’s talk about the base. The 2015 edition of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver remains a 42mm watch made in vertically brushed stainless steel, with a ‘Mega Tapisserie’ pattern on the dial (large squares obtain from a hand guilloché) and it keeps its black rubber strap. The water resistance is always given for 300 meters and the timing functions are made thanks to a rotating internal bezel, activated by a secondary crown located at 10. It is printed with a 60-minute scale, with the first 15 minutes highlighted in black, contrasting with the rest of the dial.

The watch is still powered by the nice and reliable in-house movement – Calibre 3120, the same as the classical Royal Oak ref. 15400. This automatic movement has a central gold rotor and is finished with polished beveled angles and Geneva Stripes. It boasts 60 hours of power reserve and indicated the hours, the minutes, the seconds and the date (in a window at 3 o’clock). So, what’s new… This movement can now be seen from the back of the watch – AP also added a sapphire caseback to the Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph last year – without changing the water resistance. The only difference between the case of this 2015 edition ref. 15710 and the case of the old ref. 15703 is a thickness of 14.10mm instead of 13.90mm.

The other main novelty comes from the dial, as the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver is now available both in black and in white. This new white dial virtually reduce the size of the watch and brings a more delicate look. However, even if the 42mm size can be seen as reasonable considering actual standards, don’t forget that the AP ROO remains a large watch, heavy and thick, because of the integrated lugs and the raised bezel.

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver ref. 15710, with a black or a white dial, will be priced at $19.000. More about it here.