ON THE WRIST: TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 7s - Baby Pink and Ice Blue

 

TAG Heuer Boutique / 28th September 2024, Meadowhall, Sheffield

It's always a pleasure for me to visit the TAG Heuer boutique in the Meadowhall shopping centre, the staff are lovely people and they always have time for you. If you are in that part of the world I heartily recommend stopping by. I tried on quite a few watches on my most recent visit there and there are still more 'On the Wrist' posts to come, including the carbon Monza (finally) and the latest 'Racing Green' Monaco (meh).

But today we shall focus on two.... I was going to say ladies watches, but really only one of these is truly a ladies watch, and that, quite obviously is the baby pink strapped WBN2315. As you can see I didn't actually try it on, in fact I'm not at all sure the strap was big enough to go around my 7.1/2" wrist, but my wife did and she quite liked it.

The watch is 36mm in diameter which is definitely on the large side for my wife's wrist, but it didn't look ridiculously oversized and she could wear it. Neither of us really like white mother of pearl dials that much so that wasn't a good starting point and the pink gradient track around the dial is a little polarizing (not to mention, limiting when it comes to changing the strap).

I also have my reservations about the strap, it probably helps to make this wear smaller though, which is probably a good thing given the feminine design choices, but I could imagine this quickly looking grubby if it was worn day in day out. 

I don't know, there's something about it that looks a little 'cheap' to me, maybe just the shade of pink. It doesn't scream £2850 to me if I'm honest, and ultimately my wife much preferred the diamond dial version that came out last year - well she would, eh, and it's 50% more expensive! 

The other watch we looked at was this 'Ice Blue' WBN2316, which is another recent addition to the 36mm Carrera family and to my eyes much more appealing. When I saw the render I thought the pure blue dial looked very exciting, but unfortunately in the flesh it doesn't look quite the same. In fact there's a touch of teal about this one that I wasn't expecting and that I could very well live without.

It's a shame, but I feel like my end of year WOTY rating is going to have to come down now because my 'First Impression' score was largely dictated by the cool looking dial shown in that render and while this colour is pleasant enough on it's own terms it simply isn't what I was 'hoping' to see.

Otherwise the watch is quite nice on the wrist, albeit a little small for me and I don't really like the butterfly clasp or the complete lack of micro adjustment, which I personally couldn't live with - I sold my Link Searacer for that very reason. 

I thought my wife would be more excited by this one, but I guess the lack of diamonds and the 36mm size failed to spark her imagination.