A Top Affordable Royal Oak Alternative Gains a New Party Trick, a Goldilocks Size and a Lower Price Tag

More capable, more comfortable, less expensive. That works.

Close-up of a silver metal watch with a textured mint green dial, silver hour markers, and a crown with a triangle symbol.

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Published February 12, 2026

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With the explosion in popularity of integrated steel sports watches over the past decade, the market has been awash with both new and revived models.

Since Audemars Piguet established the genre in 1972 with the Royal Oak, the category had been the exclusive domain of high-end brands like AP and its rivals, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. But the recent resurgence of the style has triggered the arrival of a new batch of great affordable options, such as the Tissot PRX, Christopher Ward Twelve, Maurice Lacroix Aikon and more.

One of the best — and least talked about — of these affordable Royal Oak alternatives is the Alpina Alpiner Extreme. This is a dynamic-looking sports watch with excellent finishing from a legitimate Swiss brand boasting over a century of history and a reputation for producing tough-as-nails tool and sport watches.

If you haven’t paying attention to the Alpiner Extreme, you should start now, as the brand has introduced a new model that adds more versatile functionality, a sweet-spot size and even a lower price tag.

Silver stainless steel wristwatch with a light turquoise textured dial and metal bracelet, displayed on dark rocks. — Alpina’s first solar-powered collection looks spectacular.

Let the sunshine in

The Alpiner Extreme Solarmetre is the first-ever solar-powered watch collection from Alpina. That’s a bit surprising, considering the brand’s outdoor focus and the fact that it’s owned by Citizen, inventor of EcoDrive, but I guess it’s better late than never.

The stainless steel watch features the same general design as the existing quartz and automatic versions of the Alpiner Extreme, including the same angular case with symmetrical crown guards, the same top-brushed bezel held in place by six exposed screws featuring the Alpina mountain logo, and the same flat, H-link integrated bracelet.

However, the Solarmetre comes in at a new sweet spot size, slotting in at 37.5mm across the case. That’s bigger than the 34mm quartz version, but more compact than the 39mm and 41mm automatic versions. Lug to lug, the Solarmetre is just 38.9mm, and the case measures a scant 10.19mm thick. Water resistance remains a robust 100m.

Close-up of a silver Alpina watch with a textured magenta dial, silver hour markers, blue-trimmed hands, and a date window. — The dial is discretely translucent so it can pass light to the hidden solar cells beneath it.

The dial also keeps the Alpiner Extreme’s signature pattern of repeating mountain logos, but it loses the 3D texture that’s present on the other versions of the watch. The reason for the simpler, flat dial is that it actually covers solar cells. The dial is translucent and lets light through to these cells, which in turn power up the movement.

Speaking of the movement, the watch runs on the Calibre AL-140 solar quartz movement that Alpina developed with Swiss manufacture and sister company La Joux-Perret. The movement will charge from any light, not just sunlight, and just one minute in light is enough to run the watch for a full day. Fully charged, the watch will run for ten months — even in complete darkness.

Although the dial lacks texture, is still looks pretty high-end and has the same lume-filled handset and applied markers as the other versions of the Alpiner Extreme. There’s a framed date window at 3:00, and the triangle index at 12:00 features a blue border — a distinction that’s unique to the Solarmetre versions and complemented by a matching blue triangular counterweight on the seconds hand.

Silver stainless steel watch with textured blue dial and matching blue rubber strap. — The Solarmetre is available on a bracelet or a rubber strap, depending on which color you choose.

Availability and pricing

Whenever a brand offers the same watch with automatic, solar and quartz movements, the automatic is always the most expensive. Then the solar. Then the quartz. But that’s not what Alpina has done with the Solarmetre.

The watch is priced at $1,320 on a rubber strap and $1,585 on the steel bracelet. Those are of course cheaper than the automatic versions, but what’s shocking is they’re the exact same prices you’ll pay for the smaller, non-solar quartz versions, which blows my mind — this watch has a more popular case size and undeniably better movement technology.

At launch, there are five references of the Solarmetre. Two are on a bracelet: one with a burgundy dial, the other in mint green. The other three come with an integrated rubber strap. There are dark and light blue versions with color-matched straps, plus a white dial on a black strap. All five are available now from Alpina.

Silver stainless steel wristwatch with a textured burgundy dial and date window at 3 o'clock.

Alpina Alpiner Extreme Solarmetre

Specs

Case Size	37.5mm
Movement	Alpina Cal. AL-140 solar quartz (La Joux-Perret)
Water Resistance	100m

$1,585 at Alpina

About the Author:

Johnny Brayson is an editor at Gear Patrol mostly covering watches. He enjoys watches that are packed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em details and believes nearly every watch could stand to be a tad smaller.

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