BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer 'Solargraph' Solar Quartz Watch

 

WBP1112.FT6199

When the original Solargraph came out I was more than a little intrigued. A cool black Aquaracer with a lume infused carbon bezel - count me in! But God-damn it took a long time to come to market, and by the time it did there was suddenly a rather nice titanium version on offer too. Unfortunately, right at the point when the watch finally broke cover was right when I was saving hard to buy myself something 'special', and so I was reluctant to part with the necessary £2500 to buy it because I knew it was going to take a long time to replace that in my TAG fund.

But still I sat in the TAG Heuer boutique in Sheffield for what must have been nearly half an hour, pondering and debating. I liked it, but... it seemed a little small, and a little expensive and I wasn't 100% sold on that light blue hand. Of course since then I have bought the green dial Calibre 5 Aquaracer which is also 40mm (all my other Aquaracers are 43mm) so I came back to the watch better prepared from that perspective, and as for the blue hand well I think I like it now... it's kinda cool that it marks out this Aquaracer as a solar-powered model and I also like that this is the original 'Solargraph' and always will be.

Ultimately I decided against the purchase, though I really wanted to buy it (and I really wanted to buy it from Maxine at the Sheffield branch too) but I felt the price was just too much and since then the watch has climbed another £200 to £2700 - so clearly I was never going to buy one new. Fast forward eight months or so and I found myself in London, Euston Station to be precise... as I approached the electronic board to find the time of my train home I noticed a youngish guy with his arm held up near his head. On his wrist was the original black Solargraph, immediately recognisable and super cool. Noted!

On returning home I received an email from Watchfinder telling me that I had early access to their Black Friday sale. I had already seen that they had a Solargraph on the site for £1900 (reduced from £2240), a decent price but perhaps not quite bargain enough to tempt me. However, perusing the Black Friday deals I saw the Solargraph had dropped to £1680 and I instantly decided it was now or never. 

And so a couple of days later I returned home to a delivery from DHL and inside was the Solargraph, looking every bit a stunner and actually a lot nicer even than I remembered it. I have to say, in this instance Watchfinder's photographs did not do the watch justice. It is a spectacularly vibrant watch and in person looks almost hyper-real. Everything on the dial is so 'sharp', and putting it against my other beloved Aquaracers makes them all look kinda dull!

But there was one thing I was a little concerned about, that being the rubber strap. Given that you have to cut the strap to size and then use the micro adjust to get a perfect fit, what were the chances that it would actually fit me: the last thing I needed was to have to spend £100 or more on a new strap. But then given the price I couldn't very well expect Watchfinder to supply a new strap in the price.

Arriving home I took the watch out of the box and peeled the protective wrap off the the watch head, before sliding it over my hand. Oooh, that seemed a little bit tighter than I expected, will this clasp even close? Well, yes it did close and the strap was a perfect fit. Wonderful. Well, there was no way this was going back. What a beauty.

Of course the next thing I did was grab a torch to get a look at the lumed bezel - something Maxine had tried to show me in the shop to little success. It looked great, albeit the green lume in the carbon bezel is definitely weaker than the blue numbers and markings. What I didn't realise before I got this was that the blue second hand is actually fully lumed too - which isn't particularly 'useful' per se, but is very cool all the same.

The watch is reasonably light, but not as light as it could have been because the case is DLC coated steel rather than titanium (more cost cutting from TAG Heuer), which is a bit of a shame but hardly the end of the world. I read on THF forums that DLC over steel is less resilient than coated titanium, I don't know if that's true but I wouldn't be surprised. Good job that I am very careful with all my watches but especially the coated ones. 

I am hesitant to say this is now my 'favourite' Aquaracer, because that's only a statement I think can be made after a few months of ownership, but it's certainly up there. I don't want to slag the green one off because I have been warming up to it recently, but certainly it doesn't stack up to this. The yellow Calibre S has always been my favourite, but it certainly needs to look over its shoulder now because the Solargraph is coming for it big time. 

The slatted dial in particular catches the light wonderfully and the carbon bezel looks cool - although I have to say the patterning of it does make you think it's damaged when you first look at it. It looks like there's chunks missing, of course there isn't, but I did rub my finger over the surface to reassure myself it was perfectly smooth. 

Well, I have to say, I'm usually the first one to roll my eyes when Black Friday comes around, but this time I can't really complain. What a bargain. And there was me thinking I was only going to pick up one watch this year. Of course two is a massive come-down from the last few years, but still falls within the boundaries of my 'quality not quantity' strategy going forward. Plus I love not having to put this in the winder if I'm going to wear it, or worry about changing the battery for 15 years (I'll be 69 years old by then, assuming I'm still here!).