I have what you might call a love/hate relationship with Audemars Piguet. They are, without a doubt, makers of some of the finest watches in the world. Objectively speaking, there’s a level of craft involved with the production of AP watches that is hard to match at the scale at which they operate. Every Royal Oak I’ve ever handled feels like a perfectly made thing without any compromises. I honestly can’t say the same about equivalent watches from other brands in the so-called Holy Trinity.
And yet, there’s so much baggage with Audemars Piguet in our current watch culture. I wrote about it here, specifically as it relates to the Royal Oak and how it has become a signifier of wealth and status that has overshadowed watchmaking and watch culture. I find this flex culture to be a huge turn off, and the way AP seems to lean into it, by producing more and more varieties of Royal Oak, some with mini sculptures of Marvel characters on the dial, to be a signal that they’re a willing participant in the watering down of their brand.
But then Audemars Piguet will go ahead and release something beautiful that is not a Royal Oak and I’m reminded that derisively referring to them as The Royal Oak Company (something I’ve done frequently over these last few years) is ultimately unfair. Earlier this week, as part of a larger drop that included several exotic Royal Oaks, a pocket watch, and more, AP launched what might be one of the riskier watches they’ve introduced in years, the Neo Frame Jumping Hour.
The new Jumping Hour is the first watch in what AP plans to evolve as the Neo Frame collection, which will be a home to shaped cases and similar aperture based time telling readouts. There is some obvious vintage inspiration here, and indeed AP has a history of making rectangular watches and jumping hour models dating back to the 1920s. The aesthetic here is very much tied to the Streamline Modern movement from that period, which as a historical marker has become an increasingly popular point of reference for many brands in recent years.
The truly captivating thing about this watch, once you start looking at it from multiple angles, is the case construction. While on the surface the Neo Frame Jumping Hour has the appearance of something classic, this watch could not be made without the most modern manufacturing techniques and engineering. The front of the case itself is a flat, black PVD coated sapphire crystal with gold toned apertures, flanked on either side by eight pink gold gadroons, which along with the caseback form the structure of the piece and curve sharply into dramatically pointed lugs. Everything is screwed together from the caseback side, which allows those gadroons on both sides to exist without a separate component connecting them at the 12 and 6 o’clock ends of the case.
The watch is powered by the Calibre 7122, with jumping hours and trailing minutes. This is Audemars Piguet’s first automatic jump hour movement, and is based on the Calibre 7121, which powers the Royal Oak “Jumbo” references. That caliber was designed to be modified by AP for applications just like this, so the Jump Hour has many of the same technical benefits of newer Jumbos, including a 52 hour power reserve and better shock protection. Lots of little details were thought through in the production of this movement specifically, including crafting the hour disc from titanium and the minute disc from aluminum, both decisions made on the part of AP to increase shock resistance in a movement housing a complication that is inherently somewhat delicate.
I’m pretty intrigued by this watch, as I always am when brands reinterpret designs from the Art Deco period through a modern lens. This type of vintage inspiration is quite a bit more interesting to me than rehashing midcentury dive watches and chronographs, which, in my opinion, have a sameness about them that makes modern versions kind of dull. But there’s so much variety in watch designs from this pre-war period that there’s a lot of opportunity for adventurous brands to do interesting things with shaped cases and modern materials that use those design codes as a reference point. I’m pleased (and a little bit surprised, if I’m being honest) that AP went for it and apparently will continue to iterate on the idea with future Neo Frame pieces, but that’s a really wonderful thing.
The retail price of the Neo Frame Jumping Hour is $71,200. It is not a limited edition, and will be available beginning in June. Audemars Piguet
Zach Kazan
2026-02-05 14:00:00