TAG Heuer unveils yet another crazy expensive Wear OS smartwatch with no LTE
If you found Montblanc's newest luxury smartwatch a little rich for your blood, at a starting price of close to $1,200, wait until you hear how much TAG Heuer is charging for its refreshed collection of Connected timepieces.
This was the first-ever luxury brand to release a smartwatch powered by Google's software platform back when said OS still went by the Android Wear name, and although a later version of that device with a modular design of sorts started at an almost reasonable (by TAG Heuer standards) $1,200 a couple of years ago, the premium new "collection" of Wear OS products merely includes super-expensive and... crazy expensive models.
We're talking $1,800 variants with black rubber straps and stainless steel cases, a $1,950 model pairing a robust steel bracelet with a 45mm case made from the same material, and a $2,350 TAG Heuer Connected flavor replacing the steel case with one constructed out of "ultra-light" titanium. That may sound like a ridiculous pricing structure for most everyday smartwatch users, but of course, this Swiss company has a radically different target audience than, say, Apple or Samsung.
Instead of selling millions of copies to the masses with razor-thin profit margins, TAG Heuer is perfectly content moving a much lower number of these bad boys at a massive gain per unit. Believe it or not, the upgraded TAG Heuer Connected is not even LTE-enabled, like the significantly cheaper Montblanc Summit 2+, although for what it's worth, its list of features does include a built-in heart rate monitor, unlike its 2015 and 2018 forerunners.
The latest addition to the ever-expanding family of fashion-centric Wear OS devices also shares many other specs and capabilities in common with plenty of budget-friendly smartwatches out there, from standalone GPS support to a large and sharp OLED display with a diagonal of 1.39 inches and resolution of 454 x 454 pixels, a fittingly hefty 440mAh battery capable of keeping the lights on for up to 20 hours between charges, NFC for wrist payments, Snapdragon Wear 3100 processing power, and water resistance up to 300m deep.
That means the $1,800 and up price is almost entirely owed to the name on the back of this smartwatch, as well as its admittedly stunning design inspired by the luxury watchmaker's "legendary chronographs." Any takers?
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