Secrets about the APS factory

In one of the articles I published late last year, I talked about the friendship between ZF and APS; Today, I will share more interesting stories about the APS factory.

First of all, have you ever heard of BF? When the AP ROO Diver 15710 and 15720 models first appeared on the market in 2021, I thought it was a new factory; but BF has actually been around for over 5 years and even has a much longer history than APS. There is a connection between APS and BF: their bosses are cousins. BF was the party that introduced APS to this sector.

The relationship between ZF and APS is quite solid; I mentioned this in my article titled Brotherly Relationship Between APS and ZF. When APS first entered this market, almost all replica watches used Asian clone ETA 2824 and 2836 movements; They wanted to use better mechanisms to produce better replica watches. So they initially focused on mechanism research and development; Of course, most of the new movement development process was completed by traditional Chinese movement factories. Let's take the Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve as an example: the first model with the old movement looks strange, see the picture below.

Movement and Caliber Performance

Then, APS cooperated with a mechanism factory in Dandong to develop a new movement; Once installed, the Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve with the new movement below looks very nice. At that time, APS was selling this Portuguese 52010 movement only to ZF. However, after a year or two, APS realized that they could not make enough money by simply developing the movements and selling them to other factories, and they began selling their own Portuguese 7 Days Power Reserve replica watches with their newest 52010 movement; but under another name: “AZ”, some also call it AZF. So APS and AZ are actually the same team.

Clone IW52010 has been a huge success for APS; Now they wanted to develop another great movement, especially after seeing Noob release the Dandong 4130 movement, APS immediately took action. Again collaborating with Dandong, they developed two movements in 2020: one is the JL925 for the Jaeger LeCoultre Master Moonphase, and the other is the JL938 for the Jaeger LeCoultre Reserve De Marche. The first batch of Clone JL925 movement was sold to YL factory; Later, APS also installed the JL925 in its own JL Master Ultra Thin Moonphase replicas and sold it under the name “AZ”. Afterwards, this clone JL925 mechanism was supplied to two factories, ZF and GF.

Next is the 3120 caliber used in the 15400. We know that the 3120 was previously developed by JF, but JF closed down; later the 3120 was improved by a mechanism factory in Shanghai. APS also seized the opportunity and purchased all 3120 movements from Shanghai. Now we can see that the 3120 in the Royal Oak 15400 produced by APS is very stable. Afterwards, APS supplied a small quantity of the 3120 caliber to ZF. Then, APS and this movement factory in Shanghai jointly developed the 4302 movement; We can now see the 4302 being used in the Royal Oak 15500 produced by ZF and APS. The last movement I want to mention here from APS is the 5134 used in the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar 26574; This mechanism is also quite stable. For AP 26574 replicas I still recommend the APS made ones, which are more stable than BBR's new releases a few weeks ago.