ByTor, a regular contributor to the Replica Collector and other Replica Watches forums put this excellent review together on TAG Heuer Link Chronograph replica watches. Thanks to him for allowing me to repost it here!
I don't buy many watches. I often trade the watches I don't wear and I never make any "impulse buys", either. Also, when I'm in the verge of purchasing a new watch I always think "will it see any wrist time or not"?. But when I first saw this TAG rep I knew for sure that I would own it soon. I immediately started pestering Precious Time, my trusted dealer, and virtually forced him to get this watch into his stock. Needless to say my watch arrived well packaged and in absolutely perfect condition - quickly, and without any hassles, as usual. I rarely praise any dealers in my reviews but you really can't do it any better than PT. There's ZERO customs risk (for us EU guys) when the watch gets shipped from UK.
It's not exaggeration to claim that the new TAG Link Automatic Chronograph is one of the most impressive & accurate replica watches. I almost pulled a trigger with Bentley, but since I already own a Breitling I decided to go with the TAG first. Yes, I didn't own a TAG - or any watch with blue face for that matter... and besides, I really like the looks of this particular model. It's very sporty - and the blue dial is very beautiful and captivating.
The dial is very tricky to photograph, because it has Seamaster-type "waves" (or perhaps "stripes" would be better word) on the center surface. The only way to bring up the "electric" effect is to shoot it with reflections:
The crown is a standard screw-down crown and it operates normally. Pushers are rather stiff but function firmly and solidly.
HERE is a link to a brief historical background of TAG and Heuer. Personally, I have always been quite a fan of some Heuer/TAG models. I used to own a genuine Aquaracer quartz two-tone watch and I have nothing but good to say about it. Tag Aquaracer 2000 Chronographis one of the best looking chronograph watches I've seen, and I'm anxiously awaiting for a good rep. And while I have to admit that most of TAG advertising is rather pretentious, at least they don't claim that "It takes a year to build a TAG Heuer".
The replica factories and our dealers have been spoiling us with absolutely stunning Replica Rolex Watches recently. This is, of course, unfortunate from the dealers' point of view. Members have become more "anal" than ever before, and we've had a few discussions about this lately. Still, I want to believe that our "anal retentive feedback" can help the factories to build better and more accurate models.
Due to aggressive marketing (using sports heroes like Tiger Woods and Kimi Raikkonen... and Hollywood celebrities like Uma Thurman and Brad Pitt in their advertising) TAG Heuer has built very solid and luxurious reputation among the non-watch enthusiast circles.
But hardcore WIS gang has always looked TAG down their noses. Probably because majority of TAG's sales come from grossly overpriced (and sometimes rather cheaply constructed) quartz models. WIS also think Heuer betrayed its roots when the company was bought by TAG in the mid-eighties... and as mentioned before, started moving their production more towards quartz-powered Replica Watches.
Quartz models aside, TAG's higher end chronograph line (Link, Aquaracer 2000/Aquagraph, Monaco, Carrera) belong to the same category with other mid-luxury brands (such as Breitling, Omega and Ebel). All these brands, like TAG, use outhouse movements and heavily base their chronograph line on Valjoux 7750. The Link Chronograph Calibre 36 even uses the mighty 36,000 vibrations per hourEl Primero, which pushes it to the Daytona/ Broad Arrow/ Zenith heavyweight class. Perhaps not horologically (due to outhouse movement), but at least from practical and technical standpoint. So it's quite fair to say that (besides overpriced, overhyped quartz models) TAG also makes some very impressive sports chronographs.
Like the replica of Breitling "Fighters" model, this watch has perfect subdial spacing. This is still rare to see, even on high-end replica watches that our fantastic dealers can source for us. It was almost impossible to find anything other than factory pictures for reference, so I constructed this rather poor and small comparison shot. Don't be fooled by the different lighting and photographing conditions: the only difference I'm able to spot is the larger date window on the genuine. Or perhaps it's just the factory pic that makes it look that way?
