TAG Heuer announce their new Android Wear smartwatch

Yesterday we saw someone at TAG Heuer flick the switch on their website a tad too early and reveal some of the details of their new smartwatch, the TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45. Last night they had the official announcement and revealing of their second generation Android Wear smartwatch and it was the most entertaining and informative launch I have seen in a long time.

So far the Android Wear watches we have seen released this year have been extremely lacklustre and disappointing but that changed last night with the release of the TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45. It is everything most of us want from a smartwatch — it has a decent sized display, it is water resistant to 50m, it has sapphire glass, it has 4GB of onboard storage, it has NFC and most of all, being a watch, it is a stunning piece of jewellery. The downside, and unfortunately it is a big downside, is that the price begins at $2400AU.

TAG Heuer have obviously put a lot of effort into this smartwatch and if you check out the website you will see why it has modular in the name. You can mix and match modules (casing) with straps of various colours and materials, and also with different lugs. You can design the exact watch you want. Unfortunately I did that and now really really want to spend $2500 on a watch. All of these pieces are interchangeable depending on your mood for the day. Did I mention you can get a diamond-encrusted bezel if that takes your fancy?

The specs of the watch can be seen below, and aside from the heart rate sensor and an LTE module there is nothing missing (as you would hope for that price):

• 1.39in AMOLED display with 400 x 400 pixel resolution (287ppi)
• Scratch resistant sapphire cover glass of 2.5mm thickness
• Intel Atom Processor Z34XX
• 512GB RAM, 4GB internal storage
• Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, tilt detection sensor, microphone, haptics engine, ambient light sensor
• GPS
• NFC
• Bluetooth LE 4.1
• Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz 802.11 B/G/N
• 410mAh battery (up to 25 hours of battery life with normal usage)
• 1h50min charging time from a dead battery
• Android Wear 2.0

On top of this amazing looking and specced smartwatch TAG Heuer are throwing some heavy software weight behind it. Not only have they developed their own smartwatch app for it that you can use to control you specific watch content but also browse through a collection of TAG Heuer watch faces. Even more impressive is the new TAG Heuer studio that allows the user to customise and build their own watchface. The studio offers 4000 ways to customise your watchface.

The modular section also allows you to swap out the connected module for a mechanical, more traditional module if required. TAG Heuer have obviously put a lot of weight behind their smartwatch foray as you can see if you go and check out their website.

At this stage TAG Heuer are the only luxury branded Android Wear smartwatch available but they say they hope that others will follow them into the smartwatch marketplace. They are committed to this segment of their market and stated last night that they are not forgetting about their first connected smartwatch and that it will receive the Android Wear 2.0 update by the end of the month.

The TAG Heuer website lists several jewellery stores near me that sell these watches but after having trouble finding a generation one TAG Heuer watch we suggest ringing around first if you are interested. We have reached out to TAG Heuer for more local information and will pass it on as soon as we have it.