Audemars Piguet is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year so it's fair to expect a long list of commemorative watches, and the floodgates are opening with some incredible timepieces flowing out. First, we'll explore a new perpetual calendar movement, Calibre 7138. The watchmaker has placed it in three watches to start. A 41mm Royal Oak in 18-carat sand gold or stainless steel and a Code 11.59 in 18-carat white gold.
The perpetual calendar is the low-maintenance calendar timepiece you want if you'd rather not deal with updates to your calendar watch to correct the day and month (You could also go for IWC's eternal calendar watch). You can learn more about the perpetual calendar here, where the gory details are explored. With the new movement, Audemars Piguet has modified the mechanics in a way that simplifies using a perpetual calendar and improves the ergonomics.
The watchmaker stated that its 'reimagining' of the perpetual calendar movement took over five years to complete (Not that it is important, but it would be interesting to know if they aimed to complete the update in time to celebrate the anniversary from the start of the project).
Perpetual calendars usually have correctors on the case you can activate with a small tool to adjust the subdials. Writing that (and hopefully, reading it) makes it easy to visualize how much of an inconvenience that is. Yes, it's a first-world problem, but it's still a high price to pay for a watch that claims to be 'perpetual'. That's where Audemars Piguet's new movement comes in. It does away with the clumsy correctors and includes the correcting mechanism into the crown instead.
If you need to correct your perpetual calendar, you can simply use the crown instead of dealing with tools and the risk of damage to your prized possession. How was this achieved? The crown has four positions. Position 1 is for a clockwise wind, and position 2 sets the date, including the month and leap adjustment. Position 3 sets the time bidirectionally, and position 4 sets the day, week, and moon phase in the counterclockwise direction.
If that sounds like a lot for one crown, few people will argue with that. However, it's safe to bet that most perpetual calendar owners would rather deal with one crown than correctors operated by an obscure tool.
Clearly, the mechanics behind this movement and 'fancy' crown have to be complicated. It operates with the help of a lever and wandering wheels that connect with the calendar wheels. That's an overly simplistic description of the innovation, which is protected by two patents for the crown correction system and the month/date correction from the crown.
In addition to the new movement, some updates have been made to the subdials of each of the new watches to improve legibility, aesthetic harmony, and symmetry. The first week of the year is now at 12 o'clock along the inner part of the bezel. The day subdial is at a position where 'day 1' aligns with the 12 o'clock position.
The dial comes with a progressive step for the display of the date at 12 o'clock, which is also patented. Another innovation is the 31-teeth date wheel with varying sizes to adapt to the digit width and improve readability.
For perfect symmetry, the month and year subdial is at the 3 o'clock position, while the day and hour subdial is at the 9 o'clock position. You could almost see the perspective lines that show perfect alignment between both subdials. The day subdial also has a subtle 'no correction' indicator for the period where a correction shouldn't be attempted. The good news is if you ignore the warning, you don't risk any damage to the timepiece. The correction simply won't be accurate.
The last subdial is the moon phase which is at the 6 o'clock position. The look is based on a NASA photograph and centered along the 12 o'clock axis for the final step in the perfect symmetry the designers were aiming for. Again, you can't help but visualize the perspective lines that confirm the symmetry of the subdials.
All three variations using the new movement come with 41mm cases, 50m water resistance for the Royal Oak models, and 30 m for the Code 11.59. Previous versions of Audemars Piguet perpetual calendars in both collections only had water resistance up to 20m.
All the innovation aside, the three watches are absolutely beautiful and reflect the Audemars Piguet ethos. The Royal Oak models look almost good enough to eat, as the squares in the guilloche on the Grand Tapisserrie dial give the watch added elegance that's hard to describe. The 18-carat gold hands and hour markers on the Royal Oak models are the icing on the cake. All models come with a sapphire caseback showing off the details and beauty of the Calibre 7138.
So, we have impressive innovation and understated elegance on a set of watches that are limited to (you guessed it) 150 pieces. The only question left is which would you pick?
