New 34mm Audemars Piguet Royal Oak White Ceramic Watch

Introducing the New 34mm Audemars Piguet Royal Oak White Ceramic Watch Before Labor Day, after Labor Day—who cares, people will be clamoring to wear this watch.

Audemars Piguet quietly unveiled a new watch today - and it's pretty darn cool. Note that I'm not just talking about the white hue of the case. No, you're looking at a new 34mm white ceramic Royal Oak watch.

The brand has apparently been launching some ceramic models for a while now, but the white models have always slowly followed the black ones. This is because white ceramics are obviously more difficult to manufacture than black ceramics - both in terms of physical strength and technology. AP doesn’t take halves here, so the case has to be satin-finished with brushed chamfers—a difficult feat for a watch that’s nine times harder than steel.

The silver Grande Tapisserie dial is the same as the black version, with rose gold applied hour markers and Royal Oak hands with luminous coating. The back of the watch is also made of rose gold, through which you can see the Caliber 5800 movement specially designed for the Royal Oak 34mm watch launched in 2020.

AP ceramic watches have been all the rage for a while, but I'm always amazed at how much AP customers love white ceramic. Personally, it’s not my first choice for this brand – for example, I’d rather have a black ceramic perpetual calendar than a white ceramic perpetual calendar when they also make a black ceramic perpetual calendar. This is a true statement, maybe I don't get it. So I turned to our resident fashion editor, Malaika Crawford, who better understands why this type of watch has such a cult following.

“Ceramics are nothing new these days. Hey, when I feel like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan in 2004, I wear a white ceramic Chanel J12. While white ceramic reminds me of the first generation iPod and my college MacBook, on a watch, it does look fresh. I once saw Bloody Osiris wearing a 41mm white ceramic Wannian 34mm, perhaps a more democratic version of the Bloody drip QP. Aesthetically, it's much bolder than a black or even rainbow Bucci dial. But on the right person, it's the perfect statement piece.

So maybe it's not just me who isn't the right person for this particular watch. However, apart from the blue ceramic perpetual calendar AP released last year, white ceramic is one of the rarest AP cases and is of course highly sought after by collectors. There are 22 watches in the AP catalog in black ceramic (including Code 11:59 with a ceramic middle). But there are only four white ceramic watches in the collection – two complications you’ll never see in person and one, this year’s Only Watch. The white ceramic perpetual calendar is also no longer available. As such, it's the only potentially purchasable watch with this case material, and it's certainly hard to come by.

Honestly, I would wear a 34mm Royal Oak if the combination of material and dial was right. While this seems like the most obvious way to reintroduce the case material back into the 34mm black ceramic lineup, I'd love to see AP do something like white ceramic with a black or blue dial to reflect the case. If you're already compelling, why not go all out?

Base
Brand: Audemars Piguet
Model: Royal Oak Automatic 34mm
Reference number: 77350CB.OO.1266CB.01

Diameter: 34mm
Thickness: 8.8mm
Case Material: White Ceramic
Dial Colour: Silver-plated dial with Grande Tapisserie pattern
Indexes: pink gold applied hour-markers and Royal Oak hands
Luminous: yes
Water resistance: 50 m
Strap/Bracelet: White ceramic strap, AP folding stainless steel clasp with black DLC treatment

sports
Movement: 5800
Functions: hours, minutes, seconds
Diameter: 23.9 mm
Thickness: 4mm
Power reserve: 50 hours
Winding: automatic
Frequency: 28,800 vibrations/hour
Number of Gems: 28