ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 300M with Full Lume Dial

WAY108A.FT6141

Steffans, Northampton / 15th May 2018

Wes at Steffans is a very nice man, twice in the last two weeks I've been in there and asked him to put links into bracelets for me and twice he's refused payment. He doesn't know I'm blogging about him either, so I'm very impressed. Of course this is how service should be, but I've been charged in Goldsmiths before now - not that I object, in fact if I want a service then I should pay for it, especially if I haven't bought the watch there, which is why I offered to pay, but Wes wouldn't take my money, so thumbs up to Wes at Steffans.

Now, on to the watch. I saw a photo of this at Baselworld and it caught my attention, but the photo didn't show the true extent of the lume. In the photo the lume appeared two different colours, but what it didn't show was that the entire dial is actually lumed.

And indeed the bezel, which I don't think we've seen on a TAG before, at least not recently.

The dial is interesting, because despite appearing white in the pictures it is definitely a light silver colour (which may be to do with the lume?), at first I was slightly disappointed about that but on reflection it maybe softens the monochrome scheme a little bit. 

The watch is 43mm in diameter, but it's quite thin and with the black case playing its usual tricks you could be forgiven for thinking it was 41mm. The strap wasn't sized for me, so I'm a little nervous of the deployment clasp as it looks like being the kind that I usually have trouble with. The strap itself is very smart though, and I imagine it will be fine for everyone else.

Interestingly, Wes told me that when he was at Baselworld he was shown a picture of a prototype which came on the the black nylon strap similar to the one on the Phantom Aquaracer from a couple of years ago. I can imagine that probably looked quite good as well...

Price for this one is £1700, which is definitely on the higher side for a non-bracelet Aquaracer, but I'm sure that dial is going to sell it and I imagine this is going to be one of those novelties that doesn't stick around too long. So if you want one it might be wise to get your money out sooner rather than later, and avoid having to buy a scratched pre-owned piece.

I don't think I will be buying though, I really like it, but I'm wary of that clasp and in all honesty I've spent rather a lot of money on watches already this year and I don't think I can justify another one just yet.