At 39mm wide, it qualifies as a classic “Jumbo” case, and at just 8.1mm thick, this also makes the RD#5 the thinnest Royal Oak chronograph ever made. This slimness is thanks to the new in-house Calibre 8100, measuring a mere 31.4mm by 4mm. And you’ve likely never seen a chronograph constructed quite like this, and it’s all thanks to wanting to fix that pesky pusher problem.
“Their travel – that is the distance they must be pressed – is often 1 mm or more and requires a force of around 1.5kg,” says Giulio Papi, Director of Watchmaking Design. “Our aim was to reduce these values to enhance the client experience, drawing inspiration from smartphone buttons which typically have a travel of 0.3 mm and require 300 grams of force.”
So Audemars Piguet’s engineers went back to the drawing board and emerged with a patented mechanism that optimises energy from both the movement and the short-travel, low-force pushpieces. The traditional reset system was thrown out in favour of a smart rack-and-pinion mechanism that banks energy as the watch runs and releases it in one smooth, satisfying motion when needed.
(Related: Tick Talk – Time Well Spent)
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