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Piaget's Altiplano 900P (GOA39110) Review

During SIHH 2015 I was privileged to visit Piaget’s Plan-les-Ouates facility in Geneva, and while on the tour I met with the technical team that realized the vision that the marketing team had dreamed up for the thinnest mechanical watch the Piaget has ever made. Piaget's Altiplano 900P was introduced at SIHH 2014 and is only now finding its way into the retail channels. It is only 3.65 mm thick.

A natural consequence of the technical challenge is that the case, dial, and movement all had to be designed from the ground up, and a change in any one aspect would have consequences on the others. Dropping in an already existing movement into a new case with a fresh dial would not suffice: to get the desired thinness the developers had to integrate the case dial and movement into a unified whole to succeed, all while adhering to the codes of the Altiplano collection.

The case back serves as the mainplate and the bridges are on the dial side. The dial for reading the time is offset toward 10 o’clock and keeps the Altiplano collections’s baton hands and alternating double and single printed indexes for the hours.

The blackened ring for the hours chapter has the same opaline finish as would a standard dial on an Altiplano. The gold hands are easy to read over the rhodium and black finished of the dial.

Note that the dial is recessed to the movement bridges so that the hands will not add unnecessarily to the height of the watch:

There is very little clearance for the hands below the crystal. A consequence of such tight tolerances is that the water resistance of the watch is limited to 20 meters, as higher pressures may deform the case so that the crystal presses down on the hands, stopping the watch (not necessarily letting moisture in).

Since a traditional silvered dial would add undesired thickness, the movement being exposed allowed for a more contemporary approach finishing, and for the rose gold piece in this review, the bridges have a rhodium finish with a sating graining, while the white gold model has blackened movement bridges.

The beveling of the bridges is beautifully executed and I like that the going train bridge has been openworked.

This watch looks great on the wrist, and the gray strap is a nice touch.

In my Thin and Thinner post below I asked which of the two 38 mm models from the Altiplano collection people preferred:

At the time of this writing it was unanimous (though only with 3 responses) that the 900P is the preferred watch over the more classic Altiplano with traditional dial. I agree with them, and would certainly pay the premium for the 900P over its more classical cousin (though the 40 mm manual winding watch is still my favorite from the entire collection).

Bill

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