ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer Aqauracer Calibre 5 Two Tone Watch

WBD2120.BB0930

TAG Heuer Boutique / Meadowhall, Sheffield, 17th August 2020

Clearly, two-tone isn't everyone's cup of tea... but I don't mind it. As it stands I own three two-tone watches; a grey dial 3000 Series, a white dial S/EL chronograph and a silver dial 2000 Exclusive. I like all three of them, but since I bought them all pre-owned I pretty much avoided the premium that precious metals add to the price of a watch. And it is quite a premium; this 41mm Aquaracer costs £2600, which is about £750 more than a regular, steel bezel Calibre 5 Aquaracer of the same size. 

Despite that, my first thought when I saw it was 'Oooh, that looks rather nice!' and I started mentally calculating what it would come down to with a 30% discount should it ever make it to the Bicester Village outlet store. 

I'm somewhat disappointed then to report that in real life the watch didn't 'wow' me like I'd hoped it would. In the render it looks like the sort of watch one might wear to visit Miami, but on the wrist it seemed a little flat. The gold bezel reminded me of the one on my own 2000 Exclusive, which is not a good thing unfortunately. You see, because I bought it pre-owned I accepted that the bezel looked a bit dull and was peppered with very light scratches, because I figured that was how all gold eventually ends up... but to be honest, while it wasn't scratched, the gold bezel on this Aquaracer wasn't really any 'brighter' than mine.

To be fair it does have a somewhat 'brushed' finish, which I presume is designed to negate the worst of the inevitable scratches that the material seems to attract, but I can't help thinking where that is most needed is on the highly polished 'over-riders', which is the one part that will take the brunt of any contact with doors and walls and thus the most likely to get damaged.

And while we are talking about scratches, this one did have a rather noticeable scratch on the first link above the watch head. I know gold is soft and all and I know it will scratch, but seeing it scratched straight out of the cabinet did kinda kill any lingering enthusiasm I had for this one pretty much stone dead. 

I'm also not entirely sure that the blue dial works as well as I thought it would. I've always had this thing about solid gold watches, they always seem to have white or grey/black dials and I never really like either. With two tone it seems less of an issue and I thought blue would be a much better fit, but somehow it seems to jar just as badly, if not worse. 

I'm genuinely disappointed by this, I really thought it was one that I was going to fall in love with but it wasn't to be. Thankfully this wasn't the only watch I tried on in the boutique that day and some of the others got me a lot more excited, notably the new 'Batman' GMT Aquaracer and the carbon effect dial Formula 1. I also got to try on one of the new Carreras, which was quite an eye opener - needless to say, reports to follow in due course.