I remember reading ages ago someone slagging off TAG for using a plastic movement holder in their solid back watches. I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently Federico found out that Cartier are doing the same thing, so if anyone brings it up again, there's a ready made answer!

 

You mean that Cartier is as crappy as TH or more like "hah so what, Cartier does the same shit so you cant hate on TH for doing it" ?

Does anyone know in what model ranges they use plastic? F1? Carrera?

 

Actually, I think it is called "Delrin", aka "DuPont™ Delrin® acetal homopolymer resin"

 

To be honest guys, i wouldnt mind it.

And it nothing to do with i am being biased towards TAG

In Cartier case, their in house movement was smaller than their case design hence the need of the movement holder. For me it is rather an unimportant part of the watch, if i may say. Rolex for example rarely use (or not using at all) movement holder because they tailor made their movement perfectly the same size with their case.

For me if it needs the movement holder. Then any material will be fine. Preferably gold but if not, plastic is fine. It just means less magnetic for me if it use plastic movement holder. (I dont know if it is count as less magnetic but anyway i still dont see all the fuss)

Why is it such a big deal all of sudden if Cartier use a plastic movement holder ? Maybe because other brand other than Tag already using it and got away with it. The thing is WIS always able to find a way to punish the watch company (sometimes its good, sometimes its bad). For example, Panerai when they developed the PAM631 movement (or PAM630 movement i forgot, not a paneristi myself) WIS complaint it for being "uninspiring movement. Its a well working work horse movement. Just undecorated. Sometimes paying high price made you more vindictive, i guess.

I might be wrong in this but please enlighten me. I would like to learn more.

 

Probably everything that is not in house movement and uses case bigger than ETA/Sellita movement.

But i could be wrong. Would like to know more as well

 

Life's too short (and important) to worry about plastic movement holders.

 

To be honest I think there's more important things to worry about. At the other end of the spectrum JLC (I think it is) make a watch with a gold movement that's decorated to the hilt and it has a solid caseback. WTF is the point of that?

Also, not entirely related, but a while back my wife was looking at the Tudor Claire de Rose line which comes in three sizes. The middle one had the same movement as the smaller one and hence the date was in the middle of the dial. Now that's something to be embarrassed about, not a thin ring of acetal homopolymer resin...

 

Oh wow...when creativity meets limitation...

 

Indeed, they are nice watches and my wife came very close to buying, but the big one was too big and the small one was too small and this one had the stupid date... in the end she bought an Oris skeleton with a diamond bezel instead. I think she made the right choice. Not least because it was her first auto and it has no date - result!

 

Latest Aquaracer line uses plastic holders. Much worse is that it uses the lowest grade of Sellita movements, mine was already in service after less than one year, because accuracy was all over the place, then it performed fine for a while, but after 3 weeks it is back at -20s/day.
It is not about the plastic holder, it is about the attitude towards the product and towards the customer and at the moment I have to say that I very much dislike TAG's attitude.

 

Oh dear, that's not a good post to read for someone looking to buy an Aquaracer!

 

How's the accuracy after you brought it back from the service ?
Mine was still on +10 seconds a day but i am thinking whether i should service it.
I already written before calibre5 is the worst accuracy experience among Tag's. Too bad it wasn't just me.
On the other hand, calibre18 is very very accurate. We (both me and my friend) even rate it with elprimero (my friend's zenith) and it turned out calibre18 has lesser +/- per day. I dont know if anyone also feel the same. But we test it for 2 different weeks and the results are the same.

 

Accuracy after service is unfortunately -15 to -20s / day. It was OK for a couple of days after service (-5 to -6 seconds / day) but than it slowly came back to -20s / day. There is a lot of problems with new Calibre 5 watches. I'm fully aware that accuracy is to some extent a matter of luck but TAG greatly increases the chance that problems will occur by using the cheapest Swiss movement they can buy.

 

I dont know anyone who got so lucky with calibre5 until now. But hope i am wrong...

Calibre6 is on the other hand is very very very good. I have both the chronometre one and non chronometre one. They both are superb.

I really like the latest Link 3 hander. But if they are using calibre5 i might think hundred times before i pull the trigger

 

Calibre 5 used to be all right when they used higher grade ETA, but then they deiced that the money will be better spent on 149 ambassadors. In the newest Link they even had the guts to put see-through caseback on that plain undercoated base Sellita.

 

At 20s/day I would definitely be sending that back, and if they cant fix it ask for a refund.

Although Im fairly sure when the different movement grades came up before, there was not a significant difference between the standard and worst grade. There was a post on this a while back

 

I will probably have to do that, but at -20s I still cannot ask for refund, because -20s is actually the tolerance for lowest grade Sellita SW200-1. Pretty ridiculous with 2150€ MSRP watch isn't it?
I, on the other hand, I'm very sure that there is a big difference in movement grade. Standard is the worst of four available grades and it has much more generous tolerances than higher grades.
What irritates me the most is that my YouTube videos featuring my Auquaracer have now more than 160 000 views and I have sold a lot of Aquaracers for TAG, there is even one gentleman on this forum who wrote me that he bought an Aquaracer after he heard me saying good things about it in my videos, and now he is having problems with accuracy as well...
Needless to say I'm done with TAG Heuer, I'm pretty angry with them right now.

 

Sorry to hear what you experienced Spartan.

Hope you'll still be around here every now and then.

I can assure you the 'aquaracer plague' has not move into carrera (yet, at least).

For the record, i am also tempted to purchase another aquaracer if it wasn't for my trauma about the accuracy.

 

-20s is out of spec:
"Standard automatic: between -5 and +20 seconds per day"
https://faq.tagheuer.com/articles/e...=en_US&c=Watches%3AAll_Watches&fs=Search&pn=1

Its a shame they are so bad, I am very tempted with the current calibre 5 aquaracer, but it needs to tell the time!

 

That would suggest -20 is outside tolerance?