Tag Heuer Carrera Mikrograph Watch

Brand new for 2011 is a new watch with a new in-house made movement from Tag Heuer - and it is pretty darn impressive (I hope it works). The team responsible for the ultra modern Tag Heuer Monaco V4 watch now bring the ultra retro inspired (but with modern movement) Carrera Mikrograph - resurrecting the "Mikrograph" name. During the "Heuer" only days, the Mikrograph was a stopwatch able to measure time down to 1/100th of a second. Given the partial homage nature of this watch, the logo only reads "Heuer" as Tag Heuer has been doing lately on their vintage inspired timepieces.

No matter how much history Tag Heuer would like you to think about, the new movement in this watch wasn't around anytime before 2011. Highly complex in construction, the automatic movement displays the time, date, (what looks like a power reserve indicator), and has a 30 minute chronograph. The movement is further unique for having not one, but two balance wheels. Looks like one of them is just for the 1/100th of a second hand. Before now, it was impressive for a mechanical watch to measure just 1/10th of a second.

How does it work? The chronograph function takes up three hands on the dial. First is the right subsidiary dial that counts completed minutes up to 30. There is the lower subdial with a hand that spins once each minute. This gives you the first decimal point in your measurement of time. Finally, the watch uses the large blue hand to measure the second and third decimal point. This super quick hand goes around the entire dial once each second - having the Mikrograph behave a lot like a foudroyante style timepiece.

Tag Heuer will make just 50 pieces of the limited edition Carrera Mikrograph, and it will come in an 18k rose gold case with matching brown reptile strap. Price will likely be quite high - but having done well with a few other highly complex Tag Heuer watches, the brand has proved they can demand it.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch reviews site aBlogtoRead.com.