TAG Heuer Refreshes The Aquaracer Solargraph In Steel And Titanium; Mido's Blue Commander Datoday; BA111OD's Skeletonized Chapter 7; Konstantin Chaykin's Matroskin Wristmon; AP's Royal Oak Concept

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I forget how much I like these solar Aquaracers and their heavily grained surfaces. One of my favorite sports watches you can buy now.

In this issue

• TAG Heuer Refreshes The Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph Lineup In Steel And Two Grades Of Titanium

• Mido Adds A Blue Sunray Dial And Day-Date To The 65-Year-Old Commander Lineup

• BA111OD Skeletonizes The Chapter 7, Keeping The Great Proportions And Price

• Konstantin Chaykin Teams Up With Soyuzmultfilm For A Cat Themed Matroskin Wristmon

• Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal

👂What’s new

1/

TAG Heuer Refreshes The Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph Lineup In Steel And Two Grades Of Titanium

TAG Heuer's solar-powered Aquaracer has had a good run since its debut in 2022. Most recently, the brand shrunk the interesting quartz watch to 34mm, completing the full package. And just as they’ve done that, TAG went ahead and refreshed the hero watches in the collection, they sharpen the case design and add material options that actually change the character of the watch depending on which one you pick.

The case is 40mm wide and 9.97mm thick. This is interesting to note: that 40mm is measured diagonally, so the horizontal footprint with the extended case sides runs closer to 45mm. But I didn’t find the watch to wear excessively large. The new dodecagonal bezel gets six rider tabs instead of the previous arrangement, graining on the base, and sunray-brushed raised numerals. There's also a fluted flange at 9 o'clock that mirrors the crown guards on the other side, creating symmetry that the earlier design lacked. A flat sapphire with double AR treatment sits over the dial on all four references. Water resistance is decent at 200 meters.

The steel models come with blue and green dials, both with horizontal teak-deck-groove texture over sunray brushing. White text and markers keep things clean. The Grade 2 titanium variant is the one I’m picking: a sandblasted finish on the case and a darker gray tone dial, polar-blue accents on the five-minute markers, seconds hand, dial text, and a lacquer ring on the crown. It’s a tool watch. The Grade 5 titanium goes in the opposite direction — brushed and polished finishes, rose-gold-plated hands and indexes, alternating bracelet links. Something that looks a bit more dressier, despite the sporty construction.

All four have the TH50-00 Solargraph calibre, a La Joux-Perret base movement with solar charging. Two minutes of direct sunlight covers a full day; 40 hours charges it completely for up to 10 months of autonomy. They all have material matching three-row bracelets with toolless quick-release and dual-button deployant clasps. The 19mm lug width is a mild irritant if you want to swap straps, but manageable.

The steel Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph in blue and green are each priced at €3,050, the Grade 2 titanium is €3,600, and the Grade 5 titanium is €3,800. See more on the TAG Heuer website.

2/

Mido Adds A Blue Sunray Dial And Day-Date To The 65-Year-Old Commander Lineup

The Commander has been one of Mido's best arguments for taking the brand seriously since 1959. It’s changed a lot but retains a lot of cool. The latest version is called the Datoday, Mido's portmanteau for the day-date complication, and it's a solidly executed entry-level dress watch that doesn't try to be anything it isn't. Now, it’s getting a new blue sunray dial.

The case is 40mm wide with a lug-to-lug of 43.83mm, all stainless steel with a mix of satin and polished surfaces. The crown sits almost flush within the case profile, a Commander signature, and the glassbox sapphire crystal adds visual depth. Water resistance is 50 meters. The bracelet is integrated into the case and features alternating brushed and polished links.

The sunray blue dial does its job well. Faceted black-varnished indexes with white Super-LumiNova sit against the stepped flange, which carries a quarter-second minute track. The day and date window sits at 3 o'clock with a polished metal surround — white text on black background. Diamond-cut baton hands get the same black varnish and lume treatment as the indexes, keeping everything visually coherent.

Inside is the Caliber 80, Mido's ETA C07.621-based movement, which has become the quiet workhorse of the mid-range Swiss watch market. Eighty hours of power reserve, Nivachron balance spring for antimagnetic and shock resistance, Côtes de Genève finishing on the rotor. The bracelet closes with a folding clasp with push-buttons engraved with the Commander logo.

The Mido Commander Datoday in blue is priced at CHF 890. See more on the Mido website.

3/

BA111OD Skeletonizes The Chapter 7, Keeping The Great Proportions And Price

With every new release, BA111OD is proving that they really are conquering the market on expertly-made, Swiss-produced, highly-advanced watches that are sold at prices that really puzzle the market as they shouldn’t be possible. They have made waves by producing the least expensive Swiss made tourbillon – the BA111OD Chapter 4.1, as well as the BA111OD Chapter 4.5 GMT Tourbillon. Their CHPTR_Δ has one of the most interesting ways of moving hands and displaying time, for a crazy low price. But even with the low price they can offer their watches at, they are still several thousand euros. A great deal, but not cheap. They also have the Chapter 7, their sporty and definitely more affordable collection that has a whole life of its own now. Now, they’re introducing a skeletonized version of the Chapter 7.

The case is 40mm wide in stainless steel with an anthracite grey PVD finish. The integrated bracelet is the only option here, matching the PVD treatment, and it includes tool-free micro-adjustment. The facetted 10-sided bezel and 4 o'clock crown carry over from the existing Chapter 7 family. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Where the standard Chapter 7 offered guilloché patterns and four dial colors to choose from, this one opens everything up. You can see through the movement near 12 o'clock and through the balance spring, and the mainspring barrel at 6 o'clock has had its cover removed so you can watch the spring compress as you wind.

The movement is the Soprod calibre P024, the same automatic used in every other Chapter 7, beating at 28,800 vph with a 38-hour power reserve. Worth noting: the skeleton version hasn't been submitted for chronometer certification, which the standard Chapter 7 does have in its second gen.

The Chapter 7 Skeleton is priced at €1,510, with taxes included, which is €400 more than the full-dial version. See more on the Ba111od website.

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Konstantin Chaykin Teams Up With Soyuzmultfilm For A Cat Themed Matroskin Wristmon

Konstantin Chaykin has been making his Wristmon watches long enough now that the concept has proven itself — the Joker, the Kolobok, the Smilodon, the Time-Eaters that Louis Erard helped bring to a wider audience. Each one takes the same signature module, with rotating disc eyes and a moonphase mouth, and finds a new character to inhabit the face. This new one is slightly different from most of them. It came out of a partnership with Soyuzmultfilm, the Soviet animation studio that turns 90 this year, and the character is Matroskin, the sardonic striped cat from the Three from Prostokvashino cartoons, one of the most beloved animated characters in Russian-speaking culture. Chaykin had been sketching this concept since 2020.

The case is 40mm wide and 12.15mm thick in stainless steel, assembled from 33 components. The upper lugs are shaped as Matroskin's ears. A single crown controls all functions, which is great, and the crown is well integrated at the 6 o’clock position.

The dial base is graphite-colored through ruthenium galvanic coating, with the fur texture achieved by abrasive blasting. The guilloché whiskers are the headline addition to the Wristmon format: for the first time in the collection, the guilloché decoration extends beyond the dial surface and continues onto the bezel, rhodium-plated on top. The eyes — hour and minute disc indicators with vivid green irises — work exactly as you'd expect from the Joker module lineage. The moonphase forms the mouth. Matroskin's forelock hides the manufacture logo. Each eye takes around 20 hours of pad-printing work, with up to 25 lacquer layers applied and oven-dried before the component is finished.

Inside is the K.18-27 calibre, built around the La Joux-Perret G200 base — a 33.4mm automatic running at 28,800vph with 32 jewels and a 68-hour power reserve. The movement finishing includes perlage, circular and radial graining, hand-bevelled and polished chamfers, spherical burnishing on wheel pivot tips, rhodium and gold-plate galvanic coatings throughout. The strap is exclusive to this edition — striped leather, color-matched to Matroskin's coat, with a stainless steel buckle from the manufacture.

The Konstantin Chaykin Matroskin Wristmon is a limited edition of 90 pieces and price is set at $25,000. See more on the Konstantin Chaykin website.

5/

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal

AP's Concept series has always operated at the outermost edge of what the Royal Oak octagon can contain — forged carbon, skeleton architecture, movements that look more like circuit boards. The new Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon, made in collaboration with Yoon and Verbal of the Japanese fashion label AMBUSH, fits that tradition while doing something none of its predecessors managed: it fits a human wrists. At 38.5mm wide and 11.4mm thick in titanium, it's meaningfully smaller than the rest of the Concept lineup, which clusters around 42mm and 15mm.

The case is made out of titanium, with the folded octagonal forms and polished/brushed contrast that define the Royal Oak family. At 38.5mm it could as a dress watch by Concept standards, but the look is still very futuristic. I wouldn’t call it a sporty watch, as it only has 20 meters of water resistance.

The dial is black aventurine, but a large crack-like opening fractures it and exposes the movement architecture beneath, including the power barrel sitting at 11 o'clock. The flying tourbillon is visible too, its rotating cage finished in anodised red: the first time AP has applied a coloured finish to a tourbillon cage. The central hands are black over a white gold base.

Inside is the calibre 2982, a manual-wind movement running at 3 Hz with a 72-hour power reserve. Two rubber straps are included — black and red, both in a micro-mosaic pattern.

The Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal is price on request, limited to 150 pieces. See more on the Audemars Piguet website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her. This is the rise and fall of the only female yakuza.

• As with any editor, reading is part of my job. But never have I been asked to do what’s expected of Clarke Speicher: read a novel in two days (or sometimes one), and prepare a lengthy memo detailing how it might be adapted into film. Sounds like a plush gig, right? Not so fast. Although Speicher enjoys his work, it exists on the margins of the lucrative entertainment industry, making it a true labor of love. For Lit Hub, Julien Levy profiles the man who reads everything.

• Decades ago, Yoko Ono invited an audience to use a pair of scissors to cut the clothing she wore, later telling a curator, “I wanted to see what they would take.” Ana Mendieta tested the boundaries of her own body against the world she inhabited, once creating a shallow grave for herself where her silhouette could still be seen, rising and falling with her breaths. Amanda Fortini considers the resurgent interest in female performance artists—Ono, Mendieta, Marina Abramović, Carolee Schneemann, and more—whose work “was not salable, collectible or tied to the market in any way.”

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