Tag Heuer unveils US$1,500 Connected Watch, comes with "all-day" battery life
Tag Heuer unveils US$1,500 Connected Watch, comes with "all-day" battery life
Close to a year after announcing its plans to unveil a smartwatch, Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer today announced the Connected Watch.
Positioned as a luxury smartwatch, the Connected Watch is the first Android Wear device to cost above US$1,000. In fact, it is priced at US$1,500 (~S$2,132) which is more than twice the retail price of Huawei Watch Elite.
As hinted by Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver in June, the Connected Watch resembles the Carrera analog watches. While it is not made of gold, the Connected Watch is constructed with titanium and can be personalized with six different rubber straps, a far cry from the different straps available for the Apple Watch models.
Unlike the Apple Watch which comes in two sizes, the Connected Watch is only available in 46mm. In comparison, the Huawei Watch has a 42mm diameter case. This could mean that the Connected Watch is targeted at male consumers.
The 1.5-inch touchscreen LCD display is reinforced with sapphire crystal and has a resolution of 360 x 360 pixels. Tag Heuer developed three watches faces for the Connected which are all analog designs. You also have the option to install third-party clock faces from the Google Play Store. In the near future, Tag Heuer will be introducing watch faces designed with its brand ambassadors such as Tom Brady and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Other specs of the Connected Watch include a weight of 52g, a 410mAh battery which is stated to last "all-day" and charged by a USB charging cradle, 4GB internal storage space, gyroscope, tilt detection sensor, microphone, haptic engine, Bluetooth 4.0, Intel 1.6GHz dual-core chipset, 1GB RAM and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
Tag Heuer is offering what most smartwatch makers lack - a trade-in program. Known as the "connected to eternity", a Connected Watch owner can trade the device in after two years at any Tag Heuer retail store and top up US$1,500 to get a mechanical Tag Heuer watch. You can see this trade-in program as an admission by Tag Heuer that today's smartwatches will get obsolete in a year or two.
If you are interested to purchase the Connected Watch, it is available at the 9 Tag Heuer boutiques and 19 retail partners across the U.S and Canada. Tag Heuer states that it will be rolling out to international markets from December.