TAG Heuer Boutique / Milton Keynes, 31st May 2025
My second visit to the Milton Keynes boutique this year and this time I was lucky enough to find not only a couple of the new 36mm colourful dial automatic Aquaracers but also two limited edition Formula 1 Solargraphs. Sadly there was no sign of the blue dégredé dial on the white rubber strap, and it seems like perhaps it's not actually released yet - though I notice TAG Heuer have added it to their website with the option of a steel bracelet now.
But we (my wife and I) did get to see both the purple and the pale green versions and honestly we thought they looked rather nice. I was expecting the purple dial to look a bit wishy washy in real life, but it's actually quite a strong, vibrant tone and while it's certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea I thought it was quite effective. My wife really liked it, but unfortunately (like the 'Tiffany' blue model before it) at 36mm it's just too big and chunky for her wrist. And of course a 36mm diver is far too small for me, not that I particularly want a purple dial Aquaracer anyway...
The green is less successful, but again looks better in person than I was led to believe by the renders on the TAG Heuer website. It really does look remarkably similar to the Naomi Osaka limited edition released a couple of years ago, and if you ordered the dark green rubber strap for that you could easily pass this one off as that one, at least on the wrist (I suspect the LE has a different backplate of course).
It's a shame they didn't have the blue dial version as well as that looks pretty cool and my wife would like to try it on. However I fear the rubber strap will wear larger than the bracelet, not smaller as she's probably hoping, due to it flaring out from the case.
The other watches I came across on this trip were the two limited edition Formula 1 Solargraphs made for the Miami and Spanish Grands Prix. This was the first time I had come across the new watches with the rubber straps and as I expected I very much liked the one on the Miami L/E (that looks almost exactly like the 80s originals) and strongly disliked the one on the Spanish L/E (which reminds me of the straps found on turn of the century Kiriums).
To be honest I don't like the Spanish one much at all, the dial is not appealing to me, especially as they are trying to modernise it with the big '12' and breaking away from the traditional dial design of the originals. I understand why they are doing that, since they want to develop this line into something more than just a retro model, but it seems rather lazy and just unappealing.
To be honest I wasn't exactly bowled over by the other white model that's currently available, the one on the bracelet, and while I expected to be much more enthralled by the blue model - having now seen that in the flesh (albeit I didn't try it on), while it's definitely 'better' it still has a major problem in that curved lug abomination.
This was something I hoped would be less of a problem with the all black Miami model, and it kinda is, honestly. But there's something about it that's rubbing me up the wrong way. I don't know, it just looks 'wrong' somehow. Perhaps it's because I owned the all black original for nearly 6 years and I'm just not used to seeing 're-issues' of watches that I've previously owned... but it doesn't give me good vibes at all.
I really don't like the red/green TAG Heuer shield on it for a start. It looks too shiny and I think a white TAG Heuer logo would have worked much better (just like on the original). The rubber strap is very nice and they really have done a fantastic job replicating that, but the rest of it... nah, I'm sorry, it just ain't for me.
The applied lume pots look odd to me too, and the black dial is a bit too grey and a bit too flat. And the more I look at the hands in these photographs the more I really can't stand them. The polished crown is odd, but it's not a massive red flag... I just wish it was black. I know the originals had steel crowns but they were a lot smaller and a lot 'duller'.
Yeah, you know I'm really not feeling these F1 Solargraphs, and funnily enough I also saw those new Carrera Day/Dates in the window of Goldsmiths on this same trip and I can't say I like any of those either (particularly that weird looking green 'twin-time'). This year really is turning out to be a bit of a disaster for me and TAG Heuer, which is probably why I'm finding it hard to get excited about anything and indeed to write new posts.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is rapidly turning into my least favourite era of TAG Heuer ever... which is hugely disappointing, but then given the cost of most new watches it's kind of nice that I'm not head over heels for a ton of watches I honestly can't afford to buy. Oh well, it seems like the life cycle of most new TAG Heuer's is about 3 years, so it won't be that long until we have a whole new selection and maybe those will be more to my liking!
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