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This diamond-studded smartwatch costs nearly $200K

TAG Heuer’s latest creation is the world’s most expensive smartwatch to date, but its tech is standard wearable fare.

Zoey Chong Reporter
Zoey is CNET's Asia News Reporter based in Singapore. She prefers variety to monotony and owns an Android mobile device, a Windows PC and Apple's MacBook Pro all at the same time. Outside of the office, she can be found binging on Korean variety shows, if not chilling out with a book at a café recommended by a friend.
Zoey Chong
2 min read
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The world's most expensive smartwatch comes with 589 diamonds.

TAG Heuer

If you think diamond rings are a bit excessive but still savor shiny stones, how about a diamond-studded watch?

TAG Heuer added 589 baguette-size diamonds -- that's 23.35 carats -- to its latest smartwatch, which it showed off at this week's Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Geneve. Diamonds aren't cheap, and neither is this watch: It costs 190,000 francs, according to DroidLife, which converts to just over $197,000. 

The watch, which comes in a 18K polished white gold version, is essentially last year's $1,600 Connected Modular 45 smartwatch on bling steroids. Called the TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45 Full Diamond, it's the world's most expensive Android Wear timepiece to date. The throne was previously held by Louis Vuitton's first smartwatch, the Tambour Horizon, priced at $2,450.

Diamonds may be forever, but Android Wear is not. Despite its flashy looks, the smartwatch is a standard Android Wear 2.0 device that comes with the same technology we saw in the version launched last year. TAG has previously offered upgrade schemes for owners of its Connected line of smartwatches, though it's not known if that will apply to this one. A request for comment has not yet been returned.

It's not the first time a company has tried to put diamonds on our gadgets. Luxury retailer Brikk lets you kit out iPhone out in a variety of extravagant cases, starting from around $4,495 and sometimes going up into the millions. Apart from phones, companies have tried appealing to Star Wars fans: in 2015, Kay Jewelers made a four-inch tall 18K yellow gold BB-8 that came with 18 carats of diamonds.

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