Credits: Article and images by Alexey Kutkovoy @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/08/19/30th-anniversary-of-the-audemars-piguet-royal-oak-offshore-here-come-the-beasts/
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The Beast Four: Ref. 26238ST.OO.2000ST.01
In 2021, along with the launch of the new in-house integrated caliber 4404, developed exclusively for ROO, reference 26238ST was introduced, which will be produced without limitation for the first time since The Beast One. “Exclusively for ROO” here refers to the simple fact that the new caliber reproduces the now familiar ROO 6-9-12 vertical counter arrangement.
There will be no confusion as two out of three counters have swapped places: the small seconds has moved from 12 to 6 o’clock and thus to the classic Savonette position, the 12-hour counter has moved from 6 to 12 o’clock and the 30-minute counter has stayed at 9 o’clock. But that’s not the end of the story. The small seconds hand, which has been shifted slightly to the center of the dial compared to the counters on all ROOs since the original reference, has lost this odd but pretty feature.
Also a bit sad – this quite tolerable absurdity of minor importance gave character to the good old ROO. Welcome to the new, flawless ROO!
The flawless knight has the right engine. The 4404 caliber is made according to the unwritten industry standard. First, it has a three-day power reserve: on Friday evening, the ROO owner took off his watch to put on another special weekend watch, on Monday morning he put ROO back on, and the watch has not stopped yet.
Secondly, it is a vertical clutch, which means that the chronograph now works as a “start and forget”.
A third feature fits this scenario: the flyback function, which allows the chronograph to be restarted with a single push of a button. Not that anyone would really need that, but imagine how many people would be delighted to know and see how the ROO chrono works in real life!
Don’t look for evil irony in my words, this is a fact: modern mechanical watches are a toy for an adult child. As befits a good toy, The Beast Four has a sapphire caseback so you can view the engine.
The frequency of this caliber is 4 Hz, which means that the watch here returns to the same specification with calibers 2226 and 2326.
But what about the dial? It has been modified with the peripheral seconds scale now marked in 1/4 second increments, which helps to clearly determine the measurement result with an accuracy of 1/8 second. Otherwise, the dial of The Beast Four gives the impression of being only slightly different from that of The Beast Three – perhaps the available images use the same visual rendering with a minor revision?
Against this assumption, perhaps, is the fact that the tapisserie pattern on the dial of The Beast Four is slightly denser than that of the third model: from the axis of the hands to the date window, there are nine rows, not eight.
The other feature of The Beast Four that stands out at first glance emerges thanks to the new caliber. It is integrated, and therefore the chronograph mechanism is located on its back, on the bridge side, under the rotor. There is no longer be a deep date aperture, as the date ring is located just below the dial.
And yet Audemars Piguet tries to show that it retains the feature of the original ROO design by adding an almost useless lens above the date. Why did Audemars Piguet try to retain this element, but omit the ‘wrong’ small seconds hand subdial? I perhaps need to consult a psychologist, because I don’t understand the reason.
The appearance of the other innovation on ROO – a quick-change strap and bracelet system – should be recognized as fully justified. The quick-change feature seems to be one of the slowest developing trends in the industry – it lasts about twenty years, then wait another ten or twenty years and Rolex will introduce such a system. But why change the ‘best bracelet in the world’?
For more information, please visit www.audemarspiguet.com/com/en/collections/royal-oak-offshore.html
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Credits: Article and images by Alexey Kutkovoy @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/08/19/30th-anniversary-of-the-audemars-piguet-royal-oak-offshore-here-come-the-beasts/