Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Self-Winding & Chronograph Watches Now In Metal

Having made waves at its launch in 2019, the Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 watch assortment of 2023 debuts a ripple-effect dial together with a good variety of design tweaks, all wrapped in chrome steel for the primary time. Out there in self-winding and chronograph guises, this marks the most recent effort from Audemars Piguet to create a better-looking and better-performing core assortment of Code 11.59 watches.

It isn’t uncommon for luxurious watch manufacturers to make changes inside the first couple of years into the lifetime of a brand new assortment — and it definitely isn’t uncharacteristic of the business to quietly discontinue new watch traces only a yr or two after a loud and brash premier. Regardless of preliminary receptions that had been definitely nothing prefer it had anticipated, Audemars Piguet deserves credit score for standing behind the Code 11.59 and fine-tuning it alongside the traces of public suggestions. That mentioned, that is the second appreciable design replace and, therefore, the third aesthetic in simply 4 years for the core assortment of Code 11.59. We emphasize “core assortment” as a result of the extremely difficult variations had far more to work with to distract consideration from the extra ceaselessly criticized components of the Code 11.59 design.

Right here’s a fast comparability between the most recent Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Self-Winding watch and the debut mannequin. Provided that the difficult development and exquisite ornament of the case acquired a lot of the reward, this part stays unchanged exterior of the debut of chrome steel. Against this, no ingredient of the dial was left untouched: The bottom went from a shiny floor to a stamped ripple texture — extra on that in a bit — which, given its intricacy, may now not carry the tiny minute monitor in between the hour markers. To compensate for this and to keep up to-the-second legibility, the flange ring is now busier, full with minute and seconds monitor.

The hour markers are actually batons in each place, aside from 3 o’clock because the date aperture has been repositioned right here from the asymmetrical 4:30 location on the debut mannequin. The palms on the unique Code 11.59 watch acquired a good bit of criticism as they had been usually exhausting to learn, appeared too easy, and borderline low-cost. The 2023 Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 debuts with far more complicated hour and minute palms, partially openworked, faceted, and lumed, all doing their half in drastically bettering legibility.

Among the many causes Audemars Piguet acquired unsympathetic suggestions for its unique Code 11.59 design might need been the picture the model had constructed for itself on the again of the Royal Oak. With lofty mottos and mission statements, bonkers promoting, and greater than assured rhetoric, in the course of the 2010s, Audemars Piguet fabricated itself the picture of a model that has “mastered all the principles.” A tough-to-read watch that appeared, not less than to some, frighteningly just like timepieces provided for one-tenth or one-hundredth of its value was not one thing the plenty had been conditioned for. The Emperor all of the sudden appeared in its new garments. To be honest, not less than a number of the watch fanatic group does have an urge for food for schadenfreude — however not a popularity for pulling punches. Manufacturers and CEOs usually be taught they’ve performed one thing to displease the crowds as they’re being dragged to the digital gallows raised in minutes on the grounds of feedback sections and on-line messaging boards.

The brand new Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Self-Winding and Chronograph comes with a stamped dial. In the event you’ve seen the model’s video on YouTube from 10 years in the past, you’ll in all probability really feel such as you’re lacking out on an enormous chunk of Audemars Piguet savoir-faire, and we’re feeling you. There are, nevertheless, two issues to contemplate: First, though the Code 11.59 isn’t any low-cost watch, by any stretch of the creativeness, with a beginning value of $25,300 in metal and with no bracelet, a guilloché dial definitely would have elevated that value significantly additional. Second, the model labored with Swiss guilloché artisan Yann von Kaenel, who is claimed to have hand-engraved the bottom stamps with a sample of waves that transfer outwards from the middle together with a whole bunch of tiny holes.

The ensuing dial performs with mild in a novel approach, though, once more, guilloché can be cherished and picked up for its particular depth, intricacy, and reflections. The top end result, particularly on the chronograph, is a somewhat busy watch that has fully departed the unique Code 11.59’s restrained, oversimplified design. Solely a fraction of the surfaces are free from a texture, the flange ring, the subdials, and even the rings across the subdials present a concentric sample. Maybe leaving not less than one in every of these flat and easy would have toned issues down a bit. Nonetheless, each part seems to have been crafted with consideration and care, as befits Audemars Piguet.

The Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Self-Winding watch is out there in blue (Blue Nuit in AP-speak), inexperienced, and smoked beige. The case measures 41mm-wide and simply 10.7mm-thick is rated waterproof to 30m, and it nonetheless has the Code 11.59’s signature lugs which might be integral to the bezel and solely seem like linked to the caseback however are, in reality, not. The center case is in black ceramic and is octagonal as a nod to the Royal Oak, together with the little hexagonal screws set into the facet of the lugs.

The Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Chronograph additionally measures 41mm-wide, measures 12.6mm-thick, and has the identical assortment of colours out there. We’ve got but to see a metal bracelet for the Code 11.59, which is, frankly, a disgrace, as an elaborate, fantastically made new bracelet may remind the world that Audemars Piguet has, certainly, mastered its commerce as a habilleur and is aware of not solely how one can make, but in addition re-engineer, a surprising bracelet.

Each the Self-Winding and the Chronograph fashions include see-through casebacks revealing the intricately completed manufacture calibers that energy the Code 11.59 watch assortment. You’ll discover the Audemars Piguet Calibre 4302 within the former and the Audemars Piguet Calibre 4401 within the latter. Each are 32mm-wide, and the self-winding is available in at 4.9mm-thick with 259 elements, whereas the chronograph is understandably thicker at 6.8mm and 381 components. The ability reserve for each is a assured minimal of 70 hours, replenished by mighty spectacular 22k pink gold oscillating weights with an openworked execution — positively among the many nicest rotors on this value section. The weekend-lasting energy reserve is mixed with a 4Hz working frequency.

The Code 11.59 is shaping as much as be the watch many anticipated it to be on the primary try: A well-balanced, intricate, and splendid watch that showcases the model’s trademark consideration to element with none compromised distractions. You already know the motto from Le Brassus: “To interrupt the principles, you have to first grasp them.” Once more, Audemars Piguet deserves credit score for relentlessly pushing the Code 11.59 assortment, growing and introducing main design updates in an effort to present itself a second pillar subsequent to the famed Royal Oak. It may very well be argued that the Royal Oak reigned supreme for just a few too a few years even after it had pushed different venerable efforts of the model into extinction. The extra time handed the stronger the Royal Oak grew to become, inserting no matter subsequent effort in an ever tougher scenario.

The Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Self-Winding watch is priced at $25,300 USD in inexperienced and blue and $27,800 USD in beige. The Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Chronograph is priced at $35,000 USD in inexperienced and blue and $37,400 USD in beige. You possibly can be taught extra on the model’s web site.