ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer 41mm Carreras, F1 Solargraph and Day/Date Carrera

TAG Heuer Boutique / Meadowhall, Sheffield, 23rd January 2026

Another visit to my favourite TAG Heuer boutique and, well... as we'll see in a moment it was 'interesting' but hardly what I'd call 'exciting'. And honestly, it was a bit of a turning point for me perhaps. Because standing in that boutique with about £20,000 of watches on the desk in front of me it really made me question (once again) the point of this blog. As I've said before, I am not a rich man. I now own half a (struggling) business but I'm not remotely rich, in fact I'd probably be better off working for someone else. 

So honestly, the chances of me buying a glassbox Carrera for £6700 are quite literally ZERO. I wouldn't buy any watch for £6700. I wouldn't buy a watch for more than £5000 at the absolute max (not unless my financial situation vastly improved) and the most I have ever spent on a watch to date is £3300. Sure I could sell my entire collection and I would be able to buy three or four watches at £6700, but today it feels to me like what you're getting for that money is what TAG Heuer basically consider a run of the mill Carrera chronograph.

Well no, I guess the run of the mill Carrera chronograph would be the Calibre 16, but even so if I was parting with the best part of £7000 I would want to feel like I was picking up something 'special', and sadly I just don't feel that way about these. At the same time, I've recently been speaking to someone who lives in America, who was excited to tell me about the limited edition 'Caribbean' watches she'd been hunting down and it really made me think about how much fun I used to get from this hobby when it was more about chasing old F1s and 90s S/ELs...

But ultimately there's no point me moaning about the prices in every post because the prices are what they are and perhaps the people who read my blog are more able to accommodate them than I am? But it's not even just the prices, it feels like everything I see in the boutiques that I actually like came out at least two or three years ago. All the recent 'new' designs (F1 Solargraphs, Glassbox Carreras, even the 42mm Aquaracers) don't really do it for me. I mean it's not like I'm peering in the window wondering if I should liquidate my collection so I could pick up one of these amazing new watches. Not at all.

But as I've said many times before, TAG Heuer is a brand that doesn't stand still and I like that, so sometimes it's gonna roll my way and sometimes it goes the other way. Right now it's gone way over there, which only makes me even more determined to switch the focus of my blog away from new releases and back to things that are more interesting (and attainable) to me.

Anyway, one I could potentially afford if I really wanted to is the new green bezel F1 that came out in December last year. It was too late for inclusion in the C.O.C.O. Watch of the Year voting and so this is the first time I've covered it on the blog. I really liked it in the render, but in person it has that cacky, washed-out green bezel (like the Silverstone limited edition) and I really don't like the mottled finish they put on the steel cases and bracelets of these. The white dial is nice though; the orange pops and the black dial ring means there's no colour mismatch with the bezel (again, like on the Silverstone LE). But it's gone from being one of my favourite F1 Solargraphs (based on the render) to near the bottom of the pile.

I know I said I wouldn't rag on TAG Heuer's pricing and I know gold is hellishly expensive right now, but I just can't take this 41mm Day/Date seriously at £5500. That's crazy. That's about what my Carrera 160th Dato Sport cost when it came out, which again is something very special... this just isn't 'special',  quite honestly it's basically one step up from being a 'mall watch' and it really didn't speak to me at all. And look, I know gold centre links and crowns add £££s to the price, so this is probably the best option with gold priced as it is, but two-tone watches that just have a gold bezel, or only have a gold crown just don't work for me. Maybe TAG Heuer should either make them as they should be and charge accordingly or quit making two-tone until the price of gold comes down?

And so we come to the new 41mm chronographs, which are noticeably larger than the 39mm versions we're familiar with (which is a good start). The bracelets are nice too, not my ideal choice, but not bad and a sleek, modern interpretation of the 'B.O.R.' concept. The watches are better for not having a date for sure, but my oh my that is a LOT of green isn't it? If anything it makes me thankful that my green dial Aquaracer is a little more, ahem, subtle, because this is... A LOT. 

The blue wasn't available, unfortunately. A pity, as I suspect that would be the nicest of the three, but the black one (which I liked from the render) was a real disappointment in the hand. Conceptually the red ring seemed like a good idea, but in person it really doesn't work, in fact it makes the crystal look like plastic and the red hands look a bit tacky on a watch like this.

I don't know what it is about this glassbox Carrera. There's something fundamentally weird about it. It doesn't look sporty to me, in fact it looks 'dressy' (especially in the 39mm)... and dressy chronographs aren't really a thing are they? Some colour combinations (like purple) hide the weirdness, but this one in particular seems to bring out all the weirdness at once and I really don't like it. I actually scored this a 6/10 from the render, but I think now having seen it I would drop that to a 3/10 at best.

Hmm. So all in all, not the most rewarding boutique visit I've ever had, but still it was nice to pass half an hour in the Meadowhall store and as always the staff (Scott on this occasion) were friendly and helpful.