19 Apr 2025, 20:42
This is my second contribution about a newly released Casio watch, in a very short time span, but I can assure you, I am no Casio fanboy. I try to restrict myself to unusual discoveries.
For quite some time, I have been annoyed by the very inefficient use of front face real estate on digital watches. The worst offenders have vast masses of chunky plastic, and display frames, surrounding a ridiculously tiny array of digits. This was one of the reasons I bought a Nixon Heat (oblivious of all its shortcomings with respect to other things).
The Casio AE-1600H is head and shoulders above most digital watches with respect to legibility. Unfortunately, it too has vast amounts of chunky plastic around the display, making the watch fairly big.
On other thing caught my eye. Just like the RZE UTD-8000 — which I wrote about recently — this watch uses a CR2032 battery. Just like the RZE, it has no extra hardware onboard, like GPS, radio receiver, thermometer, barometer, ... it just listens to the quartz crystal, and provides features based on that.* Just like the RZE, the display is big, and just like the RZE, there is manual backlight.
Still, the (nominal) battery life is claimed to be > 3 years for the RZE, but 10 years for the Casio.
Over a beer, I could discuss several educated guesses at length, but I think they can be summed up with the observation that Casio is a "manufacture", whereas most microbrands are not.
* Actually, the list of time-based functions is more complete for the Casio, than for the RZE.
For quite some time, I have been annoyed by the very inefficient use of front face real estate on digital watches. The worst offenders have vast masses of chunky plastic, and display frames, surrounding a ridiculously tiny array of digits. This was one of the reasons I bought a Nixon Heat (oblivious of all its shortcomings with respect to other things).
The Casio AE-1600H is head and shoulders above most digital watches with respect to legibility. Unfortunately, it too has vast amounts of chunky plastic around the display, making the watch fairly big.
On other thing caught my eye. Just like the RZE UTD-8000 — which I wrote about recently — this watch uses a CR2032 battery. Just like the RZE, it has no extra hardware onboard, like GPS, radio receiver, thermometer, barometer, ... it just listens to the quartz crystal, and provides features based on that.* Just like the RZE, the display is big, and just like the RZE, there is manual backlight.
Still, the (nominal) battery life is claimed to be > 3 years for the RZE, but 10 years for the Casio.
Over a beer, I could discuss several educated guesses at length, but I think they can be summed up with the observation that Casio is a "manufacture", whereas most microbrands are not.
* Actually, the list of time-based functions is more complete for the Casio, than for the RZE.