Becoming a watch collector and aficionado can feel like learning a foreign language.
Sometimes figuratively, as when learning what the names of the various components of a movement are called. After that, trying to understand what each piece actually does is another job again and one that I would have to confess I haven’t finished. Or gotten very far with at all, if I’m honest with you. But still, the desire to learn counts for something, right?
And sometimes it literally is learning a foreign language, unless you’re a native francophone. Looking …

One of the best pieces of advice that I can give to anyone wanting to buy a watch is this: go and try it on. That may seem obvious to most, but given that you can now research a watch and have it delivered to your front door without leaving the couch, there is an increasing temptation to buy a watch based on photos alone- most of which are taken in a studio with fancy lighting and heavy editing.
Likewise, you can’t review or learn about a watch from official photos …

In the late 1990s TH began to develop a radically new model range that was to complement the Formula 1 series at the lower-end of the market. That watch was called the Edge.
But despite a small production run, the Edge never made it to market and was cancelled by management in 1999. Some of the unused cases found their way onto the market where they were sold as “TAG Heuer prototypes”.
There has been a lot of confusion over the years about these watches- what the original looked like and the …

Imagine if a few weeks after delivering its 336 km/h FF supercar, Ferrari announced a new concept car with a top speed of 3,360 km/h. Ten times faster, but exponentially more challenging to get this ten-fold increase in speed.
TAG Heuer have achieved the watch-making equivalent of this feat with the announcement today of the TAG Heuer Mikrotimer Flying 1000, a new in-house concept watch capable of 1/1000th accuracy. You may recall that the Mikrograph set new record back in January for being the first mechanical chronograph to achieve 1/100th accuracy, …

There aren’t many watch companies today that don’t speak of their heritage- sepia photos of the famous watches from the past, the technological achievements and of course the stars who owned them. All of this is nice, but in the end meaningless unless the company of today is building watches worthy of that legacy and not just milking an old name.
And that’s what I like about TAG Heuer today- yes, there are the heritage models from the great legacy, but there are also genuine breakthroughs and innovations, such as the …

As has been stated  here at Calibre 11 previously, the pick of the current TAG Heuer range in my eyes is the Grand Carrera Calibre 36 RS- the top of the successful Grand Carrera range featuring the El Primero movement.
What distinguishes the Calibre 36 Caliper from other models in the Grand Carrera range is the Caliper system, an ingeniously simple way of allowing the chronograph to display 1/10th second accuracy. The Calibre 36 movement has always been able to achieve 1/10th second accuracy, but the challenge has always been how …