Besides its confident, steely form, the most immediately striking thing about the new TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 300 GMT is its stylish blue, yellow and white colour palette. TAG Heuer’s designers carefully selected these, casual shades to represent the sky, the sun, the water and the crashing waves near the shore.
These colours also make the watch the perfect all-day, every-day companion for surfers and divers who travel the world in search of the perfect break and the most spectacular underwater habitats. The characterful, imposing dial, still with its signature horizontal lines, is a deep midnight blue, offset by white lume-filled hands and hour markers. The rhodium-plated central sweep seconds hand has a yellow lacquer tip, and a luminous insert designed to inform divers that the watch is running during a dive.
And then there’s the two-tone bi-directional rotating bezel, which is cast in highly scratch- and fade-resistant ceramic. To determine day from night, it’s cast in two colours: half in a deep midnight blue to match the dial and represent the night-time hours of 6 in the evening till 6 in the morning; and half in brilliant white to represent the daytime hours of 6 in the morning till 6 in the evening.
For absolute clarity and legibility, the 24-hour GMT scale is engraved into the ceramic and then filled with contrasting colours: black for day time and white for night. In pursuit of the highest quality and legibility, no detail has been overlooked. For example, the numerals 18 and 6 break across the point where the blue and white ceramic meet, and yet the colour inversion continues seamlessly across the two numerals. The GMT hand, which makes a full tour of the dial once every 24 hours and is set via the crown, is finished in yellow lacquer and tipped with luminous material. The result is a highly legible GMT wristwatch conceived and designed for the urban adventurer who in pursuing a life in the waves always goes beyond the edge.
Beyond these fresh, peppy details and the addition of a second time zone, the TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 300 GMT carries the same form and functionality of the critically acclaimed automatic introduced last year. Still in place is the instantly recognisable 12-sided bezel that ties the TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional family to previous generations. And as before, every other facet has a fluted edge so that the wearer can grip and adjust the bezel with ease and confidence. The crown is still screwed and protected, and the 43-mm case continues to offer 300 meters of water resistance.
The new TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 300 GMT comes on either a stainless steel metal bracelet or on a deep midnight blue rubber strap to match the dial and bezel. Both feature TAG Heuer’s ergonomic fine adjustment system so that the watch can easily be tailored to fit over a wetsuit and back again, or simply to accommodate comfort changes as temperatures rise or fall. The watch’s designers have endeavored to follow in Jack Heuer’s footsteps to ensure optimal legibility for this maritime timepiece.
