BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Aquaracer Quartz Ladies Watch

WAY1355.BH0716

Way back in 2021 my wife and I visited the TAG Heuer outlet at Bicester Village and she tried on a WAY1355 Aquaracer. She absolutely loved it, but she had some reservations about the highly polished rose gold bezel and how resilient it might be. In addition, at that time the watch was on sale for about £2100, which was probably reduced from about a list price of about £3000/3200 - undoubtedly a very decent discount, but still a lot of money to spend on a diamondless quartz piece unless you're absolutely besotted. 

Fast forward three years and watch prices have gone crazy (although for how much longer I wonder?), TAG Heuer's website now shows this watch at £4350, though it is out of stock and, I presume, discontinued. However, the price of the watch at Bicester Village has actually dropped significantly to a frankly incredible £1300, which means it's basically being sold at 70% off the current website price. Some deals are truly too good to miss out on, and once I noticed this and I sent it to my wife to look at we quickly arranged a Saturday morning trip to the Bicester store.

My wife has quite a large collection now and so when she buys something these days it has to be markedly 'different' from what she already has. Hence why she bought the Cartier Pasha a little while back and why this particular watch piqued her interest. Not only does she not have a full ceramic watch (she does have a 2014 Formula 1 with ceramic centre links, but the rest of the watch is steel), but she also doesn't have any watches with gold on them.

Some of you may remember last year she bought a WBD1325 two-tone Aquaracer with a blue wavy dial. This came from Watchfinder and never really took hold. Unfortunately this resulted in her selling it back to Watchfinder a few months later and losing quite a bit of money in the process (mainly because they were being sold so ridiculously cheaply on eBay that we didn't have much choice - although I strongly suspect they were fake, it doesn't really matter if people don't know or care). The fact that she'd already bought and sold one gold-embellished watch might have concerned me a little, had it not been for the fact that black and rose gold looks so incredibly cool. 

 

Now you could argue that this watch is not really worth £4350 and I know damn well that neither I nor my wife would ever have paid anything like that for it. But even so, even if we say a more realistic figure for an all ceramic Aquaracer (on a ceramic bracelet) with a rose gold bezel insert is perhaps £3500(?), that's still one hell of a discount. 

Further evidence of just what a good deal this is came when I went looking at the second hand market. I mean we know watches like this do not really hold their value, but right now Watchfinder are selling the WAY1355 for £1810, which compared to £4350 looks like a great deal. And yeah maybe some dodgy looking Chrono24 dealer might have one for somewhere near (the best I could find was about £70 cheaper but located in Japan - so: import taxes!) but quite honestly I can't believe you are going to beat £1300 brand new, direct from the manufacturer, with zero possibility of it being fake and with a two year warranty.

So yeah, a pretty amazing deal for sure. Interestingly the Bicester outlet also has the diamond bezel version of this watch (WAY1395) which again is a full ceramic with a steel bezel; another stunning watch for just £50 more - again basically 70% off the list price. My wife also checked this one out too, but it wore a little bigger with the diamonds around the edge of the bezel and 35mm is already pushing it to the max for her tiny wrists. It also looks less 'different' to her F1 than the WAY1355 and so she reluctantly discounted that one.

I really like both those watches and if they made them in larger sizes I would be very tempted myself! The rose gold model in particular is gorgeous and the bezel looks absolutely amazing against the deep black dial, case and bracelet. The watch has a butterfly clasp and as you would expect with a non-micro adjustment bracelet there are half links included to get a better fit.

Now, the issue of resilience still remains I guess and we won't find that out until my wife wears the watch for a while. But the bezels are not protected in store and I really couldn't see any marks on them so far. To be honest the gold is so polished and shiny it was hard to see the surface clearly, so my gut feeling is this isn't going to be an issue. 

I did take great pains to explain to my wife that with any gold watch the surface will get tiny marks because gold is softer than steel, but unless she really mashes a diamond ring into it or something I don't see it being a huge problem. Given what she's saved on the watch itself she can probably afford a replacement insert at some point in the future if it's really necessary!