TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition review: Pricey, but almost perfect

TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition: Two-minute review

The TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition is a premium golf watch that also doubles as a superb smartwatch for daily use. It offers a seriously impressive package as a gold watch and smartwatch combo with many top-line golf features, a great design, display, and build quality, and excellently intuitive use.

Yes, it's pricey, but it absolutely earns its place among the best golf watches by offering a top-tier, premium option made by a brand that has some serious pedigree in the history of wristwatch making and the market more widely.

The Calibre E4 Golf Edition channels the TAG Heuer quality pedigree in its design and build and this is evident as soon as you open the box. It's a chic and sleek titanium watch with a matte black finish that oozes quality. The 'Golf Edition' engraved bezel is a beaut, and the two buttons and dial (or 'crown' as TAG Heuer calls it, reminiscent of the Apple Watch's digital crown) are easy to use and engage with while wearing a golf glove. All buttons are satisfying to use, and the dial is a joy on the golf course too.

The display is crisp and clear and has very punchy colors and contrasts. I use a screen protector personally, but the Sapphire crystal screen gives me great confidence if it were to get knocked or bashed.

When it comes to the golf features specifically, the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition excels and is superb. There are more than 40,000 courses preloaded onto the TAG Heuer golf ecosystem, and my experience of getting any amendments or changes made via speaking to TAG has also been very good. Each course's hole is displayed cleanly, crisply, and clearly on the AMOLED display and makes for clear navigation, though some of the colors could be more distinct as the shades used for areas of trees and bunkers can look very similar at a glance. You can use the crown to navigate your way along each and every hole, and 10-yard lines help you to gauge distance quickly and between course locations or hazards.

Then there are the specialist features. The first is the watch's shot-tracking feature which is excellent and automatic and tracks all your shots from drives to putts. The watch and excellent companion TAG Golf app on your phone will be able to build your rounds as you go and allow you to review them afterward in 3D (on your phone, not on the watch). This is a brilliant feature, and as well as relying on the automatic tracking, you can also manually input them - as well as delete any duffers you don't want skewing the data too! This can help you build an invaluable bank of data to rely on when thinking about club choice and golf course management and strategy - especially at those courses or course

Alongside this, the watch will also measure the distance you've hit shots which builds toward offering an accurate 'virtual caddie' base of information, which you can refer to to get a club suggestion at any yardage when going for the pin or any other location on the hole. Over time, this optimizes and provides distance averages that are reliable and accurate, and the investment you put into it over a period of time really pays off. I've consistently found the whole process with each round of 18 or 9 holes to be extremely satisfying too, from measuring shot data to making changes to my bag when incorporating new clubs, all the way to reviewing shots and scores afterward in the on-course pictures.

The whole experience of having a Calibre E4 Golf Edition for premium golf watch use is also apparently from the presentation and physical extras you get. The box is incredibly sleek, and you also get a sleeve of Tag Heuer-emblazoned Pro V1s inside as well as a replacement ball marker – one of which comes attached to your watch already, magnetized to the clasp.

The TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition also makes a claim to be a premium contender for best smartwatch and best fitness tracker with its broader feature set, too. Running Google's WearOS 3, the watch is a joy to use and navigate for everyday tasks such as message and app notifications, media controls, and checking the weather and my calendar.

However, I've particularly enjoyed the fitness tracking functionalities measuring steps, and calories, and promoting the WHO's Heart Points to help visualise getting up and about. I've mainly used this only for going for long dog walks and hikes but it'll have you covered for other workouts from running to cycling to swimming.

Battery life is robust all round too. In my months of testing and using the watch I've never been in trouble, always making it to my charger at the end of a day with juice in the tank. For example, with a round of 18 with the full shot tracking on and using it as a smartwatch from dawn till dusk, the Calibre E4 Golf Edition will easily last a full day. Using it as a smartwatch only, I've got two full days of usage out of it. The bespoke charging dock also juices up the watch incredibly quickly which can rapidly get you out of a pinch and is a welcome feature.

As far as downsides go, there are, in 2024, a few of the very latest and very greatest golf features not on the Calibre E4 Golf Edition. For example, more recent entries into the golf watch space, like the Garmin Approach S70, offer excellent and specific features such as green contour mapping to assist putting, and 'plays like' tech that will take into account weather conditions to give you even more precise yardages for shots which might give those watches an advantage on the features front if you're looking for every bell and whistle.

The value-for-money proposition of the Calibre E4 Golf Edition has also perhaps taken a slight hit in 2024 due to the aforementioned competitors.

If you want a premium watch that offers the best of both golfwatch and smartwatch worlds, then the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition is still hard to beat as a premium golf watch option.

TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition: Specifications

TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition: Scorecard

TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition: Should I buy?

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How I tested the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition

I have been using the 45mm variant of the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition as my golf watch for eight months now, using it most weeks on the course. It's also been my day-to-day smartwatch for the past six months or so, replacing a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3.

I have committed months to using the Calibre E4 Golf Edition using it for multiple rounds and tracking 100s of shots. I have used it on a few courses and also adapted it, and the app on my Samsung Galaxy S22, to changes in my bag.

When I first got the TAG Heuer I was able to do some basic side-by-side testing with my previous golf watch, the Garmin Approach S40.

First reviewed July 2024