When it comes to sports, I must profess that I do not care for football at all, and you’ll only ever catch me watching rugby during the World Cup or Six Nations. However, come Wimbledon or the Tour de France, I can be glued to the television for hours on end. I think what I like is the intense internal battle you can witness in the players and riders. In the Tour especially, the grit, determination, and resilience of a lone rider striking out from the front of the peloton and the subsequent chase.
The Tour is on my mind because on my wrist is the new Tissot PR 100 Tour De France. Tissot has been the official timing partner of the Tour since 2016, although their connection is much older, having also been partners from 1988 to 1992. In recent years they’ve made a special edition watch for every edition of the race, and the one I have here is the latest iteration. Interestingly, it’s the most refined and elegant of the lot.
Specifically, this edition has a bright steel case with a smooth polished bezel, as opposed to the versions from 2022 and 2023, which were blacked out with PVD coating to give them a sportier appearance. At the same time, the new model doesn’t feature a tachymeter, which means the dial is less cramped, giving the baton hour markers room to breathe, enhancing the legibility and elegance of the piece.
It is a slight shame that you don’t have the practical applications of a tachymeter. But let’s be real, unless you’re planning to work out the average speed of a cyclist across a specific leg of the Tour, there aren’t many situations where you’ll really miss a tachymeter in the day-to-day. Plus, its absence allows for that cleaner dial, which in turn means the dial requires less space and the entire watch can be slimmer, with a diameter of 40mm instead of the mammoth 45mm of the 2022 one.
Zooming in on the details of the dial, it has a black display with a grained texture and three subdials featuring snailing. Those subdials are 30-minute timer, 1/10th second timer, and small seconds. The elephant in the room is of course the central chronograph seconds hand, which is bright, bright yellow (for the yellow jersey) with a bicycle counterweight. It’s a bike-themed watch and they had to get the bike theme in somewhere, although it’s perhaps a bit more on the nose than the cycling-themed Adley FIXI-T1.
I should also address what’s one of the coolest elements, the hybrid strap. It has a yellow rubber base which comes up around the edges of the black leather top, giving it the appearance of racing stripes. The perforated texture enhances the sporty vibe as well, matching the texture of the dial nicely.
The movement inside is a Swiss quartz number, which you may have been able to gather from the positioning of the chronograph counters. The cluster around the centre is common to quartz chronographs, instead of having the top counters in line with the central hands, as seen in mechanical movements.
These days I’m not so sure what to make of quartz movements, the quartz crisis is a long way behind us and it’s clear that there’s space for both electronic and mechanical watches in the industry. Yes, it’s not going to be pride of place in your collection but as a fun, accessible timepiece that you can strap on while you stand on the side of a French road to watch the race pass, or even hop on a bike yourself, why not?
In terms of value, it’s £415, which is about what you’d expect from a quartz model. Ultimately, I’d be happy to don the Tissot PR 100 Tour De France, jump on my bike and head straight to the Champs-Élysées. Although most of the Tour riders could probably start and finish the entire tour start to finish before I could even cross Paris.
Price and Specs:
More details at Tissot.
