Quartz Watches

While different from their mechanical cousins, these watches perform just as well as they look

REMEMBER THE FAD involving smartwatches? With the benefit of hindsight, it was merely the luxury watch industry’s knee-jerk reaction to the advent of the Apple Watch. Time has proven that the two are distinctly different segments with little influence on each other, and the smartwatch’s arrival has not precipitated another Quartz Crisis. Looking back today, some of the products released then seem almost comical. From “smart straps” that promised a connection to the Internet of Things, to mechanical watches equipped with NFC chips, many brands were keen to dabble, but soon cancelled these projects.

Interestingly, TAG Heuer continues to be one of the few holdouts in this segment. The decision is a curious one. Smartwatches, after all, are incongruent with the rest of its product lines, even the quartz timepieces the brand offers. Nonetheless, the brand soldiers on. You could pass this off as a corporate decision for the brand to offer yet another product in its lifestyle segment. A closer look at the progress of TAG Heuer’s Connected line, however, will reveal the incremental improvements that have been made in the years since its introduction.

The single biggest barrier for this product is arguably still the limited battery capacities, which necessitate frequent recharging that limits its autonomy. Once battery technology makes this a non-issue, however, smartwatches could well become ubiquitous. With that, luxury smartwatches may see a surge in demand as well, and when that happens, TAG Heuer’s Connected Watch ‒ and its few contemporaries ‒ will be perfectly poised to take off. AM