Audemars Piguet issued this Royal Oak Offshore chronograph twice with the same blue dial and the same blue rubber strap, separating the two only by what the bezel is set with. This is the sapphire version. Its counterpart carries diamonds, and everything else about the two watches is identical: the same 37 mm rose gold case, the same blue Lady Tapisserie dial, the same rose gold-toned counters, the same rose gold applied markers, the same strap and clasp. Setting a bezel in blue sapphires rather than diamonds is an unusual decision at this size, because sapphires return less light than diamonds and read as colour rather than as brilliance, so the bezel joins the dial instead of framing it. The result is a watch that is blue from the centre of the dial out to the edge of the case and then again along the strap, which no diamond-set version can achieve.
The case is 37 mm across and 12.4 mm thick in rose gold, with the octagonal bezel set with blue sapphires. The height comes from the chronograph rather than from styling, and at 37 mm it gives the watch a considerably more substantial presence than the diameter alone suggests, which is characteristic of the Offshore line. The eight hexagonal screw positions survive the setting and remain the fixed points the run of stones is arranged around, so the ring breaks and resumes eight times rather than running continuously. The dial is blue with the Lady Tapisserie pattern, which is the finest of the tapisserie grids Audemars Piguet uses and is reserved for the smaller Offshore cases. Where the Grande Tapisserie at 41 mm reads as bold relief and the Petite at 39 mm as fine texture, the Lady grid at 37 mm produces a dense, close-worked surface that only resolves at short distance. Three counters are cut into that field and are rose gold-toned rather than blue, so they read as warm objects set into a cool ground rather than as recesses in it. Rose gold applied hour-markers and Royal Oak hands sit above. Warm markers, warm counters and a warm case give the watch three separate points of gold against the blue, which is what keeps a single-colour design from flattening. The strap is blue rubber, closing on a rose gold AP folding clasp, which carries the dial colour past the case rather than contrasting with it.
The function set is a chronograph with hours, minutes, small seconds and a date. The chronograph is the reason the case runs to 12.4 mm, and on a 37 mm dial the three counters occupy proportionally more of the available field than they would at 41 mm, which is why the decision to make them warm rather than matching matters so much here. Warm counters against a blue ground separate immediately, so the chronograph stays readable on a dial that has very little room to spare. The date is worked into the counter layout rather than added at the edge, which is the only way to fit it on a dial this size without taking space from a register. Against blue, the rose gold markers and hands hold contrast at every radius, which the sapphire bezel does nothing to disturb since it sits outside the dial and returns colour rather than light.
The Royal Oak Offshore is the more assertive of the two lines Audemars Piguet builds on the octagonal case, taller and more heavily constructed than the Royal Oak proper and generally fitted to rubber rather than to an integrated bracelet, and at 37 mm it is aimed squarely at a wearer who wants the Offshore proportions without the 42 mm and 44 mm cases the line is better known for. Within this reference the range runs across rose gold and yellow gold, with silver-toned, blue, black and smoked rose gold-toned dials, on rubber straps in white, blue, black and beige. Several carry gem-set bezels and two are supplied with an additional rubber strap in a second colour. This reference and its diamond-set counterpart are the only pair in the family that share a dial and differ solely in the stone on the bezel.
This reference suits a collector who wants a set bezel that does not read as a set bezel. Diamonds on an Offshore announce themselves from across a room; blue sapphires against a blue dial do not, and the watch has to be looked at properly before the setting registers at all. That is a genuinely different proposition from its diamond twin, and the choice between them is not about how much setting to have but about whether the setting should add colour or add light. It appeals to someone who wants the Offshore case at a wearable size, in gold, on rubber, with the whole watch working in a single colour.
