I think you're thinking of a different watch. The F-91W has a green LED[1] that's notoriously terrible (not to mention lopsided).
The EL light was super, very bright and very well distributed (because the whole backlight film would light up). I'm surprised they managed to put one in such a small watch as EL film needs fairly high voltages, you could hear the switching coil whine when it was on :P Yet it still lasted a good while on battery.