All 8 Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pops, ranked by watch experts

Less than 24 hours after it was officially unveiled, Audemars Piguet x Swatch’s Royal Pop collection has already sparked fierce debates among watch collectors: Will it hurt the value of AP? Is it worth waiting in line for? Can I wear it on my wrist or not? We’ll have to wait to find out the answers to all those questions once the blockbuster collaboration hits Swatch stores this Saturday, May 16. It’s not too early, however, to have the most fun argument of all: Which one is the best? Below, I’ve ranked all eight versions of the Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop according to my own personal opinions – which, much like Stephen A. Smith’s takes, should be treated as objective truth. 8. Blaue Acht As soon as the Royal Pop was announced last week, every Chatbot in the world got to work creating renders of the zaniest and brightest Royal Oak concepts their feeble computer minds could comprehend. (I didn’t see AI cheffing up a color scheme inspired by Andy Wahrol’s painting of Marilyn Monroe, though – human ingenuity wins again, baby!) As much as I detested all the watchslop, the river of crap got at least one thing right: the Royal Pop looks best at its most vivid and bold. The muted mint green and blue of the Blaue Acht doesn’t quite get there. 7. Otto Rosso With only eight total models, the rankings get difficult pretty much immediately. The scrum between this spot and fourth are basically all interchangeable. Thankfully, mine is the word of God here and completely based on my own tastes. The Otto Rosso lacks the oomph of the remaining models for me. What I do like about this watch is the light pink vaguely resembles AP’s special strain of Royal Oaks with salmon dials. 6. Green Eight Even as a big fan of green-dial watches, I can’t rank this monochrome version any higher simply because it’s a little boring. If you’re going to spend five days camped out for a Swatch x AP or pay whatever the resale price ends up at (my guess? Take the biggest number in your head and then double it!), I want a piece with a little more juice than green-on-green. However, AP does have a history of working with green ceramic on its Royal Oak Offshore, so perhaps this is a nice nod to that. 5. Otg Roz Absolutely the most polarising piece of the bunch. I admire AP and Swatch for really going for it, especially swiping the colour scheme from Andy Warhol’s painting of Marilyn Monroe, one of the pinnacles of the pop-art style that informs this collab. Unfortunately, the Otg Roz has already become a punchline on social media, and while I’ve been asking for braver flavours in this ranking, this pink lemonade version is a little hard to stomach. Of all the options, this one might be the least wearable. Many of these colour schemes meet somewhere in between AP and Swatch’s design sensibilities, but the Otg Raz seems to lean too far towards the latter, which has a history of wild, art-inspired designs . For some, the far-out style is a perfect fit for the Royal Pop. “This version is the most offbeat and reflects a collab more so than the others,” says Sacha Davidoff , of Roy & Sacha Davidoff, who picked this version as his favourite. The dealer also pointed to a similar Mad Paris-customized Royal Oak from a few years ago with a similar colour palette. 4. Orenji Hach As a certified New York Knicks hater, I’m holding my nose up to rank this navy-and-orange version so high. When I first heard about this partnership, my mind immediately went to AP’s existing adventures in colour with its delightful ceramic pieces. One of the most popular versions of the ceramic RO is the all-blue perpetual calendar, which is a roughly $500,000 watch. The orange accents put this firmly in Swatch territory, though. I reached out to a few Watch Illuminati members to see which of the Royal Pops they liked best, and this is the first in our rankings to get a vote. Stephen Pulvirent , one half of The Enthusiasts newsletter and podcast, says this option ranks among his favourites “to support my absolutely horrendous Mets.” 3. Ocho Negro If you were going to use adjectives like “tough,” “clean,” or “fire” to describe any of the Royal Pops, it would be this one. Imagine this clipped to a carabiner on a pair of sleek, swishy Acronym pants. Tough! Swinging off the side of your Nike gym bag? Clean . Black and white is a classic color combo and this watch definitely stands out nicely among the sea of out-there shades splashed across the rest of the collection. The legendary collector and author Auro Montanari , best known by his pen name John Goldberger, cited this one as his favourite – as did a couple of other Illuminati members. “Should it ever come to pass that I can walk in and out with one in my bag, then the Ocho Negro will become my new desk clock,” says Adam Craniotes , founder of the watch club RedBar. 2. Lan Ba Much like the MoonSwatches, the best versions of the Royal Pop signal towards the actual history of timepieces. Ultimately, the most honourable purpose of these watches is to educate the masses on their parentage. This collaboration is divided into two formats: lépine and savonette. Six of the eight are the former, with the crown at 12 o’clock. The Otg Roz and Lan Ba, meanwhile, come in the savonette orientation with a small seconds subdial at 6 o’clock and the crown at 3 o’clock (the typical position you’d find it on a wristwatch). According to Hodinkee ’s Mark Kauzlarich , the proud owner of 50 pocket watches, the subdial was a common feature on historic pocket watches. “A small seconds subdial is the first thing I think of when I think of early pocket watches,” says Kauzlarich, who chose the Lan Ba as his favourite of the set. James Lamdin of Analog:Shift also ranked this highest. And, just between us, the savonette-style options might have a hidden advantage. The ability to pop these watches out of their frame means whichever enterprising bootlegger is the first to devise a strap that converts the Royal Pops into wristwatches will make a quick buck. The savonette’s more typical subdial and crown orientation would just so happen to fit perfectly into one of those theoretical straps. 1. Huit Blanc “The white one by a mile,” decrees Yoni Ben-Yehuda , the head of watches at Material Good. That was the consensus among most of the watch pros I asked: Graal Watches founder Zoe Abelson , Lex Borrero , GQ ’s 2025 Collector of the Year , dealer Derek Mon of Carat & Co. NYC, and Ben Cook of Ben’s Watches all named this version as their favourite. It’s my favourite too! The white with the rainbow indices plus the matching multicolour screws makes this watch just colourful enough without feeling completely ridiculous. A promising sign: This piece has been compared to Louis Vuitton’s famed rainbow monogram belts and bags (meanwhile, the yellow-and-pink model got a shoutout from Arizona Iced Tea... ). This is the platonic ideal of what you’d want from a Swatch Royal Oak collaboration—splashy and fun in a way that feels right for the format, but also cool enough that you’d almost like to see the colourway on a real-deal RO.