Review of TAG Heuer HL400 Stopwatch

This is a review of the TAG Heuer HL400 Pocket Pro Stopwatch. We use these stopwatches to provide the backup for our Timy timing system.

We bought the watches earlier this year, and used them for the first time to provide backup for the Pairs Head 2017. Then again as backup for the Veteran Fours Head 2017. This is what we have found so far.

It is a chunky stopwatch. The case is aluminium. It is quite a bit bigger than an NK Interval 2000, which I guess is the typical watch used for race timing. It weighs about 160 grams, whereas an NK weighs about 80 grams.

With an NK, you press: one button for On; one button to start the timer; and one button to record a split. This is nice and simple, but there are two problems:

1. If you accidentally press Stop, the timer stops. Press it again and the timer restarts where it left off. This means you must avoid pressing it accidentally at any time after starting.
2. If you accidentally hold the Split button, you clear all times from memory. Obviously you are not going to do this knowingly. The problem arises when transporting it from Race HQ.

To be fair, I have never had a problem with them in practice. It’s just that you are constantly aware of the need not to press the wrong button, or carry it in such a way that the button might get pressed accidentally. I usually supply at least one spare, synchronised, watch in case one is stopped accidentally.

The TAG Heuer has a more accident-proof system. In fact it is altogether a more accurate and reliable system.

1. It stores the time of day. The NK knows nothing about the time of day, just the timer from when it was started.
2. All times are recorded as Time of Day. If you somehow did stop and restart the watch, it would still have the same Time of Day.
3. It takes two buttons to start the timer. So you only need to do this with a few minutes to go before the race.
4. One button to record a split.
5. Two buttons to clear the memory. So you only ever do this once before a race.
6. Two buttons held for 5 seconds to turn the watch off.

This is a safe system. You can transport the watch to and from the timing positions with timing deactivated. Once racing starts, only a two-button combination can stop it.

The Pocket Pro has a USB connection, to Pocket Pro Manager software. After the race you just plug it in, download the times in a second or two, print them to a file, and import them into Excel.

We can also download times via USB from the Timy timing device. This means that within a few minutes we have the two sets of times to compare. Both devices record the times as Time of Day, so they can be compared directly.

In contrast, the NK has an obsolete infrared connection, to software that only works on Windows XP. The times are hours and minutes from when timing started. It is a long job to extract times and compare them.

The next thing is the accuracy. We train timekeepers to do reaction timing. That means that the button on the Timy and the Stopwatch should record a very similar time of day for each split.

In my race, Veteran Fours Head, I found that the two times were on average about 0.1 seconds apart. That is phenomenal. I have never seen this before. With the NK we expect times to be anywhere up to 0.4 seconds apart. This is partly made up of drift, as the NK keeps less accurate time than the Timy. The Pocket Pro has a very accurate Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator (TCXO), like the Timy, in contrast to the NK, which is a regular XO. This means it keeps accurate time during the race, and regardless of the outside temperature.

I have three niggles in practice:

1. The Split button does not have fool proof ergonomics. There is a slight click, but no beep or latch. Depending on how you rest your finger on the button, it is possible not to record a time when you press. You need to hold the finger clearly over the top on the button, pressing down, and not curled at an angle. The watch is large in the hand, and so the finger does not naturally rest directly over the button. With practice there is no reason to make a mistake, but if you used the watch for the first time you might find that some “presses” were not recorded. To keep it in perspective, we mentioned this to our timers, and we had no missed presses caused by this problem.
2. There is no button combination to deactivate timing. I explained above how you activate timing shortly before the race, and until then the buttons are not active. But there is no reverse. You can either leave timing active, or you can turn the watch off. If you leave timing active, then you risk having accidental presses on the way home. That is not a big problem. It is just untidy, and it means you can’t simply compare the number of presses. There is also no real problem with turning the watch off. You just turn it back on at Race HQ to download the times.
3. Lastly, the watch downloads to Pocket Pro Manager. This is Windows only, and exports to a text file only. It’s not really a problem, but: you can’t download to a Mac; and you can’t export to Excel. When you export to text, and import to Excel, the times are recorded as text not times. You need to manipulate them with =TIMEVALUE(range) to use them as real times.

Overall, I am very pleased indeed with the accuracy, the safe operation, and the quick download. It means we can dispense with NK’s, and we don’t need a backup set of Timy’s. You could easily time a smaller race with a high level of accuracy using this watch alone.