Best Dial of all time!? The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak X John Meyer 26574BC
AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar “John Mayer” 26574BC
I’m not very good at using a few words when I could waffle instead, particularly not on the subject of watches, but if I had to sum this AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar John Meyer up in one sentence, it would be “AP saved the best for last”.
This is the end of the era of AP’s famed Quantiem Perpetuel calibre 5134 which has 374 components, 38 jewels, a 40 hour power reserve and has been powering the Perpetual Calendar range for the past decade, or longer if we count the 2120 base calibre that it was built upon, which takes us back to the late 60s.
This is a 200 piece limited edition in white gold and was designed by John Meyer, watch nerd extraordinaire and huge AP fan who has been named as the brands “Creative Conduit” which is a typically haute horology way of saying that he’s going to be the link between what the watch community wants, and what AP can build for them.
In fairness, this is no bad thing at all given that Meyer is both a lover and a collector of our favourite trinkets and rather than go “all out” on the personalisation front, he’s made a darned fine job of paying homage to the ROQP’s past while looking to its future.
The watch shares the same stats as its siblings at 41mm diameter, 9.5mm thick, with water resistance of 20 metres due to the pusher holes in the case which deal with the calendar set-up.
It’s subdial layout is the same as its predecessors with month, date, moonphase and day running clockwise around the dial with the numbered weeks circling the rehaut.
The dial is the icing on this incredible cake.
It is named “Crystal Sky” and according to AP was designed to evoke the vastness of the skies.
It is, however, a modern little nod to the highly coveted “Tuscan Sky” Royal Oak Perpetual Calendars of the nineties.
Rather than using a rudimentary hammering technique as per the Tuscans, the Crystal Sky dial was created by electroforming the stamping die to slowly build up a three dimensional almost organic crystalline landscape.
Once the dial has been stamped, it is PVD finished in a twilight blue tone that shimmers just like the night and stars. Add to that the photorealistic aventurine moonphase and Meyer has absolutely nailed the skies here.
My favourite touch to the dial is that the subdials and rehaut match the darker base tones of the dial, but the week hand perfectly matches the lighter flashes as the watch moves under the light. This serves to make the week hand unobtrusive but there if you need it. On a complex watch, little touches like this that simplify quick reading are well appreciated.
On the legibility subject, white gold hands and markers, all lumed make this really easy on the eye with all info available at a glance and no squinting needed.
All in, I think this particular variant supercedes the ceramic variants as my new “grail” Royal Oak, and I always thought that they were unbeatable, so this is high praise indeed for the latest and last kid on the block.