TAG Heuer has released its first smartwatch, a $1,500 device that merges its traditional chronograph design with connectivity, including audio streaming, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
The $1,500 46 mm diameter watch, produced in cooperation with Google and Intel, will feature three faces patterned after TAG Heuer’s Carerra collection and include hands, a date window, and minute track.
However, information from watch apps will be displayed inside three counters on the chronograph dial at the 12, 6, and 9 o’clock positions. If wearers want to learn more, they can tap those counters and see that info in full-screen mode.
In what seems to be a dig at the Apple Watch, which doesn’t always display the time, a statement notes that “the digital hands and indexes remain visible at all times, even when the watch is in ambient energy-saving mode.”
It will feature about a day’s worth of battery life, the company said. Like other smartwatches, it must be used in conjunction with a smartphone.
The watch will come with customized apps devoted to golf, motor racing, and hiking, which will be offered with free subscriptions.
In perhaps a sign of the company’s ongoing skepticism regarding the smartwatch concept, buyers of the TAG Heuer Connected watch will have the opportunity to exchange it after the two-year warranty period for “a mechanical watch with real Swiss movement inside,” it says.
“We are going after new customers…once they have bought a Connected watch, they are ready to buy another watch one day,” TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver told Reuters.
The new watch will not bear the traditional “Swiss made” designation, though it will say “Swiss engineered,” Reuters said.
The watch is fashioned from titanium and has a textured black rubber strap. (Six other colors are available.) It can be purchased online or at selected outlets.
(Courtesy TAG Heuer)
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