Audemars Piguet On Trial & 2020 Oris Aquis Date As The Year's Best Watch

Luxury watch collectors find their natural home each Monday on Tim Mosso's "Watches Tonight!" This evening, we discuss the best new watch of 2020 and put storied watchmaker Audemars Piguet on trial. Between the best dive watch on the market and Tim's full throated defense of Audemars, tonight's episode is loaded with value, insights, and riveting narrative for watch buyers, watch collectors, and watch enthusiasts.

The 2021 Oris Aquis Date has arrived, and this dive watch might be the best new watch of 2020 so far. While the 43.5mm stainless steel case isn't new, everything else is. Oris' new automatic caliber 400 arrives with five days of power reserve, a 10-year service interval, and a 10-year warranty unmatched by any major watch brand. Caliber 400 includes two mainspring barrels, a silicon escapement, five-position adjustment, and a reinforced winding system. Even better, the new Oris Aquis diver includes a quick-release lug system that permits rapid swapping between the integrated bracelet and the accessory rubber strap. Pricing is impressive at $3,300-$3,500.

Audemars Piguet of Les Brassus, Switzerland is a controversial brand. The watchmaker famed for its Royal Oak sports and dress watches has been called arrogant, too dependent on its signature model line, incapable of launching successful new model families, excessively preoccupied with marketing, and shockingly cynical about its watch service charges.

But Audemars Piguet also does good work, "gets it," and flat-out gets it right more often than not. Tim offers a vigorous and far-reaching defense of the "holy trinity" watch on several fronts.

AP's warranty coverage puts its primary rivals to shame. While Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and A. Lange & Sohne offer between two and three years of warranty coverage, AP offers five.

Independence is another virtue to Audemars' credit. The company has been family owned and run since 1875, and this fact does bear on AP's conduct as a retailer and manufacturer. At a time when other luxury brands are producing excessive volumes of watches and discounting to move the metal, AP resolutely refuses to do this. Thats not possible when shareholders, group ownership, or emotionally detached managers are running the show; AP's family ownership is a difference maker. Moreover, AP is a careful steward of its history and legacy through a full-time museum staff and facility at the factory itself.

Audemars Piguet Renaud et Papi, the elite complications unit of the company, has a rich history of cultivating watchmaking talent and serving the Swiss watch industry. Alumni include Robert Greubel, Steven Forsey, the Gronefeld brothers, Andreas Strehler, Carole Forestier-Kasapi, Peter Speake-Marin, and other major watchmakers. APRP's list of corporate clients is even more impressive; HYT, A. Lange & Sohne, Breitling, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Richard Mille have called on this Audemars Piguet subsidiary to provide know-how and even complete-watch fabrication.