Casio F-91W: The strangely ubiquitous watch (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Casio F-91W: The strangely ubiquitous watch (2011)

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153 pointstosh220 comments

These are great! For less than $10 each, I’ve bought a bunch of them and left them scattered around my apartment and various other places so I can always find a watch. If it’s starting to take me too long to find a watch then the watch density must be getting too low, so I order some more.

Have you considered a clock or perhaps wearing your watches

Yeah interesting - I always keep my watch on, even showering - it cleans the watch and I have a water resistant one. I only take my watch off to put on a different one for style.

At this point, are you wearing the watch, or is the watch wearing you?

We're symbiotic

What?

I do the same with clip-on guitar tuners.

Snark? There are easily 20 of them kicking around my house haha

i keep 5 watches in each pocket of my jacket, in case some of them fall out.

Surely every jacket, and not just the one?

Just like underwear and pants, why would you ever need more than one jacket?

Do underwear have two pockets if the pocket is accessible from the inside and outside?

Why would your pockets fall out?

Because they have too many watches inside them.

This is genius and a great quality of life improvement. $50, I have a watch somewhere in my house that I can find and wear.

Here I am designating a place for my watch and always putting it away in that same spot like a pleb.

I must be odd. My designated place is my wrist.

That's hard unless you're Buzz Aldrin and wear multiple watches at once :-)

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/opinion-being-one-watch-gu...

The linked article does not mention Buzz Aldrin, or wearing multiple watches?

I guess they probably intended to link this: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/buzz-aldrin-rocking-three-...

at first I had to laugh, but then I realized I do apply the same strategy to chocolate

It's all about the quality of life.

That's my box cutter strategy.

How often are you (A) needing to know the time and/or (B) misplacing your time pieces?

I am afflicted by (B), which impedes measuring (A).

What do you do when the hour changes?

If the BIPM redefines how long an hour is, I guess we'll just have to ditch our Casios and start using Swatch internet time.

One can only hope, it's a beautiful concept that would make life easier for non Americans consuming a lot of live media produced in the US

Honestly, if it'd been UTC-centered instead of UTC+1 where Swatch is headquartered, I'd probably have pushed harder for it. I really like the concept.

Some countries/states don't have that issue.

My grandmother had severe arthritis and her fingers lacked the fine control needed to set her watch. So she simply kept it set to the same time zone all year round and made a mental note to subtract one hour for half the year.

The others laugh, but this is great (my house isn't big enough to bother though).

Another baby game changer along these lines - buy a 20 pack of small microfiber cloths and hide them in all your coin and inside jacket pockets. Never be without a glasses wipe when you need one. I even give them away to people who forgot theirs, since frequently I'll have two on my person.

Supposedly microfiber cloths are awful for the environment as they leach microplastics if you ever wash them.

https://www.wired.com/story/microfibers-are-the-new-microbea...

So just not wash them?

All synthetic fibers are awful for the same reason, microfibers just start out smaller.

I always just use my cotton shirt. Is there really that much advantage to using microfiber?

Only small ones

That was perfect. Thank you.

With all those dangerous F-91W's arriving at your door, have you been paid a visit yet from the bomb disposal squad?

I call this Object Saturation.

I don't do it with watches, but I do it with charging cables, socks, and toothbrushes.

(Of course, I avoid buying things, so I don't buy them.)

I do it with mechanical pencils.

Makes sense; watches are harder to steal (/s).

Nail clippers. You never know in what room, in what car, or with which pack you'll be when you realize it can't wait any longer.

oh my god i'm not alone

dollar store earbuds

I've done this with laptop power bricks.

I'm laying on my couch right now, with my laptop plugged into a brick perched permanently at the end thereof. There are two more at the table (sometimes work and personal laptop are up at the same time), and one on my nightstand, and one in the kitchen for when I'm using a recipe from online or just youtubing while cooking.

All my old Thinkpad bricks with the gray round plug have little converter cables on 'em, so they work with the modern yellow rectangular socket now. I got a new brick with the work lappy, a new one with the personal, and I think there's one knockoff cheapie in the mix somewhere.

I do this same thing, except now with USB-C chargers it's even better. Charge my laptop or my phone. There's some great charger bricks that go on sale for ~$10, so I have a lot of those.

You can also convert usb-c charger into specific laptop chargers with the appropriate barrel/rectangle adapter (search for usb-c pd trigger + laptop model on aliexpress). Caveat: the laptop doesnt know the max wattage of the charger, it's your job to make sure it gets 60W or 90W from the USB PD adapter

Historically USB chargers have consumed power when connected to the wall socket, even when not connected to a phone. Some phones have even displayed an alert "Disconnect power supply from wall to save energy" when you unplugged the USB cable from the phone. Do modern USB-C chargers suffer from the same drawback and so shouldn’t be left plugged in all the time?

I'll have to plug in a power meter to check, but I'd assume the ghost power draw is negligible.

It ends beings negligible, when you start to have 10 devices sipping 0.5-1W each.

Doing some quick math in my head, even at 1w draw each, if they're constantly drawing that 24/7, it would end up costing about 80 cents per month (at $0.11/kWh). The cost of purchasing the chargers easily outweighs that. But I probably only have 5 around the house, so I have no problem spending 40 cents per month.

> There's some great charger bricks that go on sale for ~$10, so I have a lot of those.

Is it against HN norms to put a specific recommendation here? I'd love to know some reliable chargers in that range.

60w charger: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08786SHXV/

90w charger: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B083ZBXXN5/

Thanks! I'm glad to see the recommendation for Nekteck; they looked kind of generic knock-off-y to me, but I went for https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0712252ZQ a while ago, and have been very happy with it as essentially my sole charger.

No problem. Nekteck always gets good reviews from The Wirecutter, and they did some decent testing on the chargers: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-usb-c-macboo...

Yep, bought a bunch on ebay for ~ $7 each and keep them around the house.

An aesthetic benefit to placing the ThinkPad bricks strategically around the home is that you can mount them in a way that's more tidy when you're using it, than dragging a brick around. (Though there can be an aesthetic downside to having a cable around when you're not using it.)

My favorite means of mounting a brick is to use a large pair of Velcro. For undersides on some IKEA tables, I once had to augment the Velcro pad adhesive with Gorilla Glue. Sometimes I use zip ties instead of Velcro.

When buying extra bricks, in addition to the presumed-good one that came with the laptop, I advise going to some effort and guesswork to try to get genuine, non-counterfeit ones. I've seen some corner-cutting in circuitry in other power adapters and chargers, and that seems like a fire hazard.

For people who don't like the idea of bricks plugged into the AC when not in use, Leviton and others make little switches that plug into the AC outlet.

HAHA! I do this with pens! The Pilot G-2.

If it takes me too long to find one, then I up the number of pens scattered around the house.

Nothing irritates me more than being unable to find a pen when inspiration strikes.

I guess I'm not the only one to maintain a specific density of a specific item I want on hand.

Perhaps you are now on some watchlist.

pun intended?

I sure hope so!

Same here but with reading glasses.

Another, but much cheaper trick is to always leave the alarm on: then you have around 10 seconds of chance every morning to find it, if not - then better luck next day!

Imagine the symphony of 50 Casios playing the same tune, scattered around the house :D

Reminds me how shortly after losing mine I found another on the ground to wear

I have them scattered around my place for a different reason in that I keep finding the watch itself far out lasts the cheap plastic band (especially because I use them almost primarily for swimming and other places a "disposable" watch makes more sense than wearing a smartwatch like I more regularly wear), so I keep leaving the band-less watches in interesting spots where I haven't bothered to put a clock or wouldn't otherwise need to have a clock.

Good idea. See this Matt Might post - he had the same; I've started doing it some:

End artificial scarcities to increase productivity

http://matt.might.net/articles/artific

I was really entertained by a little note in the manual for the watch:

"NOTE: THERE IS NO WAY unit components can be damaged or malfunction due to misoperation of buttons. If confusing information appears on the display it means entry sequence was incorrect. Please read the manual and try again."

I don't see many modern manuals stating this.

They don't build them state machine graphs like they used to.

"US officials view f-91w wearers with suspicion"? Better keep an eye on this guy then:

https://i.redd.it/5o061ntl2m651.jpg

https://i.redd.it/b4j5fzl4d6f41.jpg

Excuse me, it's called 'good taste.'

Taliban can afford Rolex, at least.

https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/839e131...?

Fidel Castro also famously wore a Rolex, a GMT Master

He had it, but he didn't look at it. Certainly not to find out what time it is. He also didn't inhale.

Wrong president. Also, Clinton doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would wear a F-91W.

You are correct; he was a Timex Iron Man guy.

Thank you for that bit of trivia. Very interesting.

>U.S. President Bill Clinton owned and wore several early models (including the original) of the watch during his time as Governor of Arkansas and in the early years of his Presidency. In one of his early Presidential photographs and at his 1993 Inaugural Ball, he is seen wearing a blue and black Ironman Triathlon. Clinton's forgoing of a more presidential watch such as a Rolex earned him some criticism; Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post described Clinton's timepiece derisively as “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia”, while Omega SA ran ads in 1992 suggesting that Clinton should give up the Timex in favor of something more expensive. Clinton stopped wearing his Ironman publicly in 1994, starting with the 50th anniversary of D-Day.[2][3] Clinton has since donated one of his early Ironman models to the Smithsonian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Ironman

When I was a kid, I left one of these at my grandmother's house after a trip in the late 80's, who lived in a different US state.

She shipped it back to me in a cookie tin with the current fruits of her garden, which happened to be fresh garlic.

Every time I see one these watches, I think of my watch that smelled like garlic forever.

It's also a good basis for a DIY digital watch: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto

Super project! Is it possible to buy this pre-assembled?

Or even just the board, I can do the swap myself.

I've built one of these. Good fun, but of course battery life does not match the 7+ years of the original. I think mine lasted close to a year?

If I remember correctly the magnetometer was end of life, but not critial to it's operation.

I'm not the original author, but I am considering ordering a few new boards and maybe the components. If you're really interested, give a shout on github: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto/issues/1

Wow this is incredible! I think I may just build one over the festive period.

I bought a gshock about 16 years ago when going through military training - during the time I had two other watches stop working. The watch has been in some harsh conditions and has taking a beating, its worn down to the point you can no longer read the text captions, but you can still read the time perfectly, all functionality works, even the light, and its still on the original battery.

My main issue with G-Shocks is that the actual time digits are tiny in relation to the case size. Most of the face is covered with clutter.

They're meant to give your hand some more of that action-adventure jazz.

Plus you never buy just one G-Shock. Even before the novelty of your new one wears out, you're already looking at other G-Shocks.

I bought a gshock and traded it for food in a training area in the philippines. Now I have a Bertucci.

What did you trade the good for?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip

I have had them for 30 years. They last on average three years. Three areas of failure:

(1) The black plastic hooks to the watch bands fracture. Superglue doesnt seem to last.

(2) The watch band tears. I duct-tape it sometimes. But that is temporary. If I have some bands left over from the other failures, I can replace it.

(3) In high humidity states moisture sometimes gets into the works and shorts the electronics for good.

Just buy another. If I see a clearance sale for $10 or less, I'll keeps a spare. Targets doesnt seem to have casios anymore. But Walgreens and Walmarts does.

So you spent 100 dollars on F-91W's over 30 years. 50 dollars could have gotten you a watch that would have lasted 30 years.

Unless you lost it or damaged it (drop, water, excessive scratches, etc, etc.) or it fell too much out of style. I suspect most 50 dollar watches don't last anywhere near 30 years in real life usage.

A gshock would very likely last 30 years in pretty much any usage situation.

"Lost it" is a real life usage situation for a watch and we don't yet have watches that return back to the owner on command.

But you’d have also spent 30 years wearing a watch that looked like a ten year old was asked to design a super hero watch

Beg your pardon? G-Shocks come in a wide variety of designs and price ranges. At a glance, mine could easily pass for an F-91W - a cheap, digital watch about as far from pretence as it is possible to get. Durable, radio sync'ed, solar cell driven, and watertight down to some ridiculous level of pressure. Just about the most functional piece of hardware I have ever owned. The unflashiest of black boxes, just there when I need it, shows me the time to the second every time, no discussion about it. And it doubles as a signaler, a very neat expression of who I am or at least would like to be. I wouldn't swap it for a Rolex even if somebody gifted one on me.

> And it doubles as a signaler, a very neat expression of who I am or at least would like to be.

This is a lot of weight for a mass-produced, low-cost piece of consumer electronics to bear.

It's not a hard weight to bear when the intended signal is "I'm a utilitarian who prefers wearing non-flashy, reliable, mass-produced, low-cost consumer electronics"

Of course, every ten years you have to replace the battery, which you can do yourself, w/ an easy-to-find part. I wonder where today's Apple Watches will be in 10 years.

This is what I wear: https://slimages.macys.com/is/image/MCY/products/6/optimized...

In concession, this is far more attractive than any G-Shock I have seen before, and indeed if you put a gun to my head and forced me to wear a GMW-B5000D-1ER I would consider it only a minor inconvenience.

Looks to be a DW5600BB, I own one of these. It's quite durable but maintains an nice understated appearance. I wore it non-stop for about a year then migrated to an Apple Watch. The G-SHOCK keeps on ticking as a backup watch, though.

You're the real super hero for this comment.

I've never had a watch last more than 10 years. My dad has an Omega that lasted over 30 years, but it was a lot more than $50.

> 50 dollars could have gotten you a watch that would have lasted 30 years.

You're not counting new batteries.

It's true that you can buy a tool to change your own. But a small, rarely used tool is very hard to keep track of.

My only grumble is the LED backlight is too weak to read the tme at night.

I’ve gone through a number of F-91W bands as well (never replaced the watch itself). Then I went for an F-84W instead, and it has already held together longer than any F-91W band did. Has a slightly cleaner look, too.

Re (3): there are a lot of accounts online of divers filling their cheap Casios with some oil or paraffin, so it can stand to be submerged. I guess that if it's good enough to stand pressure and coating the surfaces of the PCB to avoid short circuits, it's good enough for high humidity places. Maybe not good enough for soap and shampoo, but still a great upgrade.

I replace the watch bands with a NATO strap and fill the casing with silicon oil.

The only problem with this watch is the godawful screen light. The next model up is a negligible bump up in price and although almost completely identical otherwise, the entire face lights up bright green.

It might not be good enough for the most purist of terrorist-chic aficionados but it looks almost identical and in terms of functionality it's definitely worth the step up.

Came here to say that. It's the F108WH

In this price class, the w800 line cannot be beat. 100M water resistance, a second time zone, and a ten year battery life for less than 20 bucks is a real bargain.

Is there an equivalent analogue model? Cheap, reliable, reasonably water proof? I prefer analogue watch faces but everything I see is either garbage, terribly expensive, or cluttered and greebled.

Reply to self, with some googling I found the Casio MQ-24. $15, clean design. Not available where I live but maybe next time I'm in Europe or the US I'll pick one up.

> holding the right button for over 3 seconds in the main timekeeping mode; this will lead the display to show "CASIo", as a test for authenticity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Counterfeits

How difficult would be for a fraudster to implement such functionality?

The question should be, how much would it cost to make a convincing fake using custom circuitry?

The genuine product is so cheap, you probably can't compete with it unless you use a mass-produced generic movement.

You can't replicate its LCD or UI with some "generic" digital watch movement. Fakes have a reimplementation of the Casio module and many do output CASIo. The fakes are mass produced. There are a few identifiable families of fakes with particular errors in their production.

Mine has an additional tell in the printing on the face: a tiny, precise U under the word RESIST. On fakes, which are usually poorly printed, the U is much bigger.

My incredibly niche use-case of the watch, in particular its low-profile face and band, is that I can do handstands while wearing it. Every other watch I've owned is too chunky and gets in the way of my wrist flexion, and have to take it off before I invert. Not the case with the Casio, and one of the reasons it doesn't leave my wrist

You can turn a watch 180 degrees on your wrist for handstands

Sometimes the moment needs to be spontaneous.

Any watch can accommodate a handstand if you pair it with a sufficiently elastic watchband. :)

I do that with the Casio. Even backwards, the other watches I've owned were still too big, or the straps are metal which is a lot less forgiving on the wrists.

Also, for those of us men with "less than manly" wrists, it doesn't look oversized, unlike the bulk of men's analog watches today.

> Also, for those of us men with "less than manly" wrists, it doesn't look oversized, unlike the bulk of men's analog watches today.

Boy, is that an understatement. I don't think I have terribly manly wrists, but it barely fits on mine. I thought I'd accidentally ordered the women's version when I got it. Other than that (which is fixable with a new band) and the light, I love it, but it is a gripe.

Used to say I couldn't afford a watch I would wear. Then I got the modified F-91W (https://n-o-d-e.shop/), now I wear a watch.

Having a dumb watch gives me one more reason to leave my phone behind or off.

Nice to see that N-O-D-E is still around. I could never get one of these watches so I ended up just putting the NFC tag in myself.

What do you do with the NFC tag in those watches?

I don’t have one in my watch, but I have used NFC tags to do lots of things. I have one in my car that turns my phone into car mode, opens maps and my podcast player. I have one on my nightstand that turns my phone silent for the night and turns off a bunch of smart lights around the house. So really, you can do whatever you want with them. It depends on your imagination and what would be useful to you.

There's some other pretty remarkable watches you can get for 40$. Go up a bit and there's all sorts of various colorways for gshocks. The instant classic "casioak" can be had for 100$ https://www.casio.com/products/watches/g-shock/ga2100-1a1

The "100 and under" range is getting massively popular in the mechanical watch space as well. Vostok is a cult favorite and happens to fall in this range, then there's a whole range of homages (watches that are "inspired" by, typically nearly identical copies of in appearance, luxury watches such as omega or rolex) such as loreo, guanqing, and pagani.

The youtube channel "just one more watch" covers the budget watch category extensively. Here's a "under 100$" video by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsVmor5Qwc&t=1275s

I have no affiliation, I just am mildly obsessed with watches and wish more people were too lol

That black watch with the silver face looks tremendous

Some mods for it from 4 months ago[0].

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975012

Large fraction of world population has not learned to express themselves trough mindless consumerism. Cheapest Casio is enough "It shows the same time as expensive watch."

Buying the cheapest Casio can also be a status signal, similar to the CEO of Goldman Sachs wearing a Swatch. Buying a truly cheap watch is a signal of 'I don't care' (which may be true, or may be affected), whereas getting into expensive watches can get very complicated. There's plenty of stories from investment banking about the signals that watches send, from my understanding people are more likely to poke fun at a Tag Heuer than a Casio.

It depends whether the watch is made in China or Japan, but you would have to make the owner to take it off :-)

It is also a lot less likely to lead to you being mugged.

Signalling is not problematic itself, it's the unnecessary cost of signalling.

Signalling with low price saves money and time. It's a good thing.

These can even be used as a “dive watch” in a pinch: https://www.watchuseek.com/threads/scuba-with-casio-f91w.303...

These are great, I'm on my second. One thing that you can do is put an NFC tag within them:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2800

This lets you do all of the normal NFC things from your watch, like storing contact info, arbitrary text, etc.

I prefer the F105w-1a.You can get them for $10-15 usually. The "illuminator" EL backlight is worth the few extra bucks IMO

https://www.casio.com/products/watches/classic/f105w-1a

I always preferred W800H. Not sure about bomb making, but in everything else it's just as good as F91W just with extra features...

Just grabbed one of these too. Great middle ground between F-91W and the g-shocks.

best watch I ever owned, I bought in 1981 when I had been late and locked out of my Monday morning physics class (Dr Poynton had standards, and you learnt fast), I walked to Dixon's and bought a Casio watch that seemed to do everything I ever wanted, I can't recall it's name, but it had a swordfish on its side and it was simply amazing. it died after many years, when being used by my brother, smashed face, very sad day.

Perhaps a search on eBay for a Casio Marlin would let you find another one - the Marlin was Casio's way of marketing their waterproof feature.

I had one of those for years, then I switched to the analog MQ24, also by Casio, after realizing I liked looking at angles more than 7-digit numbers.

Also a favorite of Kristen Stewart, Tyler the Creator and Pope Francis.

Can someone recommend something close to this but with a countdown timer? I use that a hell of a lot more than a stopwatch.

Casio's Waveceptor has a countdown timer and syncs to atomic time. I've used them for probably the last 20 years.

I love the G-Shock squares if you want to stay with casio. The solar charging one that syncs to atomic time automatically runs about $90 (Model: GWM5610-1). The battery powered, manually set time runs about $40 (Model: DW5600E-1V). They keep such good time, and the batteries last for over 5 years in most cases, and can swap out in a few minutes for a few bucks, that you'll have to decide if it's worth it.

I also like pretty much all Timex Ironman watches... T53151 is small like the F-91W and pretty cheap, usually under $25. The Transit series is more square and modern looking, the TW5M19300 runs under $40.

My trusty DW5600E has been running for 9 years on its first battery.

W-800H if you're OK with a little de-soldering: https://ianrrees.github.io/2019/09/13/casio-w-800h-extras.ht...

The Casio B640.

I had a package of these opened by a government agency in the US!

My partner at the time had and loved one of these and then lost it, so I bought 8 of them for like $7 each from a store in the UK. When it arrived it had all this official government tape on it and a note that it had been opened. I forget what the tape/note said but it was not obvious which agency did the opening. Not so long after that I had something else totally innocuous (literally a postcard sized cardboard envelope with a sticker in it) opened by Customs and Border Patrol and that was well labeled as such.

I guess for IED reasons they were interested but now I'm paranoid I'm on some list.

edit: oh and I should say I got 8 to have a variety of color options, they were a great gift and after shipping it was only like $80. Highly recommend, one of them would match any outfit. Kind of fun to watch them all drift variably over several months too.

Maybe they thought you were al-qaeda:

Why Terrorists Love Casio's Iconic F-91W Watch

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkebp8/casio-f91w-watch-terr...

Definitely not for IED reasons. It is one of the most counterfeited watches, even though it is already one of the cheapest. This past October was especially busy for customs and border patrol: https://usa.watchpro.com/louisville-border-force-seizes-1050...

Oh interesting! Good call. I didn't think counter terrorism made sense it's not like opening would have revealed anything that an xray wouldn't, but perhaps for checking counterfeit makes a lot more sense.

SKMEI make a clone: https://skmei.com/products-item/skmei-digial-sport-watches-l...

It has an excellent backlight and I regularly wear it swimming without any problems so far.

Why would you not just get the original?

The original's backlight is not great: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972526

China is kinda anti-Japanese, maybe that's why?

A couple of dollars cheaper (in Australia), better backlight, 50m water resist.

How many terrorists have made a mistake forgetting to turn off the hourly alarm beep?

If one has to take off their F-91W then it means things are going to get serious.

Get to da choppaaaa!!

> The strangely ubiquitous watch

It is cheap, reliable, robust, and does the job.

That it is ubiquitous is not strange at all. Make something good and cheap and it will become ubiquitous. Bic pens come to mind.

Feel like OP should have linked to the link inside the article (provided below) which gives more evidence. Still not very good evidence, but better than this original (1/3 of wearers were linked to bomb making):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-fil...

I love mine! This is one of the few goods I chose to buy "disposable," since I can't repair a broken watch of any kind on my own. I work outdoors a lot and I'm always scratching the face and banging it on things. Usually the failure point is water getting in through those cracks, but I've had one wristband snap. I think I buy one a year roughly, and have for over 6 years.

The "cheap" Casios run on the fumes of their old fame and retro nostalgia.

I'd say the modern day equivalent would be a $20 waterproof fitness band like a Xiaomi Mi Band.

They are basically uncompetitive today, unlike they were initially. Here they are literally more expensive than a band with a color display, bluetooth and various sensors.

I dunno. For me this watch is nearly perfect. It's incredibly thin, lightweight, waterproof. It shows the time, day and date. The battery will last for 7-10 years. I can wear it day and night and never have to take it off or do anything for it.

I have a collection of other watches including Apple watches and Swiss mechanical watches. None of them are as practical and hassle-free as this watch.

This. I never have to take it off. Battery lasts forever, lightweight, thin, accurate (despite it lacks radio synch), extremely cheap.

I'm happy with mine, but it gains ~1s each day w.r.t. the national radio clock signal. I normally adjust it every couple of days.

> For me this watch is nearly perfect.

The UX is poor though. Once you've finished with the stopwatch, the next mode-button press leads to the time-adjustment mode rather than immediately back to the current time display. Any destructive modes such as adjustment should be protected behind a long-press, not interleaved into the routine mode cycle.

It's also frustratingly easy to knock the watch out of 24 hour display with a slight mistouch.

It is marvellously thin and light though, I wish there were more options of a similar form factor.

also very easy to switch the alarm on, only for it to go off at an inappropriate time

If you use the stopwatch, the mode button goes back to the current time display. I don't see an issue.

Parent to your comment mentioned that they like the watch because it's thin, light, shows time and date.

You commented that the UX is poor because of the way the stop watch works.

That user, if they're using the watch for the time and date, never experiences the stopwatch UX. To them, the UX is superb for what they do.

>The UX is poor though.

for you.

> Once you've finished with the stopwatch, the next mode-button press leads to the time-adjustment mode rather than immediately back to the current time display.

This is incorrect. If you’ve interacted with a mode, the mode button always takes you back to the current time display.

Only that your Bluetooth band needs to be charged several times a month.

It's rare that I would ever be away from a charger for more than a week. That said, if I ever get to through hike the PCT, I'll be picking up one of these cheap Casios as a sanity check for time until sunrise/sunset.

My son has Garmin VivoFit from 2015 which hasn't needed the batter changed (they weren't rechargable). He did switch to a Apple watch a couple of years ago, but it was between 2 and 3 years of every day usage.

The claimed battery life was 1 year.

Honestly I think I'm charging this band once a month. Which doesn't seem like such a hassle. Indeed, my Casio still runs with the original battery but it also has almost no features and was 3x as expensive than this band.

I am looking for a modest looking, slim watch with a dot matrix display. It shouldn't have any spying, surveillance built in. Closest to this requirement are some Seiko watches from the 80/90, but these are quite expensive.

I like the metal casios that are same size as F-91W: https://www.casio.com/products/watches/classic/a158wa-1 https://www.casio.com/products/watches/classic/a700w-1a

I've got a few various styles of, more or less, the same watch.

Dead right. For twenty bucks I can read emails without taking out my phone, measure my blood oxygen, and me and the Chinese Communist Party are able to keep track of how well I've been sleeping.

(They're all indistinguishable, but I think mine was made by Huawei.)

This watch is amazing. It has everything a watch needs, no more no less. Its thin and light on the hand, has big numerals, great battery life, reasonable water resistance, cheap enough for you not to worry about it getting scratched. I bought one recently just to relive the nostalgia.

There was a documentary about 20 years ago where a Canadian journalist traveled around in North Korea wearing one of these. His handler teased him for having a "bourgeois" high tech watch but found out that he paid more for his Rolex knockoff than the $15 Casio.

I got a Casio watch because it was cheap.

People buy cheap watches because they're poor.

There are far more poor people than there are rich people, so there'll be far more cheap watch wearers than there are expensive watch wearers.

So cheap watches are ubiquitous. Is that really a surprise?

I know several people who are far from poor and wear this watch.

People who are far from poor are a tiny minority and so have no bearing on why this watch is ubiquitous.

There are also exceptions to every rule, so it's no surprise that some rich people wear it too.

OK, but I think the point is some people want to wear this watch regardless of it being cheap or expensive. Not everything is about price.

One way to become rich is to be very careful money. Thus you tend to find the rich right in poor areas doing things that the poor do, and wearing clothing the poor do. Those million dollar homes often are inhabited by people who earn a lot of money, but spend every cent and have nothing in the bank and a lot of debt.

I know a bunch of software engineers who wear this watch. It's incredibly popular without respect to income level.

From my observations poorer people are less likely to wear this.

Both Obama and Osama have been photographed wearing this watch. As well, I would not have considered either of them poor.

There are many cheap watches; this article is about why this particular cheap watch is more popular than the others.

I have the W-800H-1AV hanging on the wall in my shower with full date and day of week. Absolutely indispensable and has held up with battery and water resistance for 5 years now.

I recently learnt that yoiu can purchase modded versions of this classic Casio:

http://casiomod.club/

I watched Devs a few weeks ago and noticed the CEO of the zillion dollar quantum computer company was wearing a F-91W. Nice touch.

Andy Grove wore an F-105 on an expansion band.

I modified mine to have a NATO strap

What's a NATO setup?

Arguably made famous by James Bond, a Nato strap is an alternative to a metal bracelet or rubber strap for a watch. Basically, a sort of fabric similar to the material your seat belt is made of, is used to strap the watch to your wrist. Lots of exciting colorways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_watch_strap

Here's my Vostok Amphibia on a NATO https://photos.app.goo.gl/vqpq31QVcBKpRbTP8

I collect mechanical watches, and the F-91W is the only digital watch I own.

Really nice to see a Vostok shared! I've got the Komandirskie and Amphibian, along with a bunch of other vintage Soviet pieces (Rateka, etc). Cheap, and cheerful, and always eye-catching.

I used to own a Raketa 24H Antarktika "Frankenwatch". It contained a genuine 2623 movement, and as best I could tell the hands were the original. Other parts, such as the glass were cheap fake pieces. It was definitely a very unique piece that people always inquired about. Unfortunately, it wasn't so durable and didn't last very long before the glass began falling off, and subsequently other components became damaged and dirty. I intend to get another eventually, if I can find a good place to get a high quality one. I'm not even too worried about getting a Frankenwatch, my only concern is the durability.

What's a NATO setup?

A conventional strap is in two pieces, so if one pin attaching it to the watch body fails you lose the watch. A NATO strap loops under both pins as a single piece, so if one pin fails, the watch is still attached by the other.

99% of people you see wearing a NATO strap will never be in a situation where they might have this problem mind you!

I used one 12 years ago. I found it in a storage box last year, and it was still working!

Good watch, I own one. But recently I started to wear fitness band instead.

I bought one of these based on that article way back in 2011!

It's still going strong!

I've had a couple.. and the strap breaks before the watch does.

Funny that 10 years later it's still going strong.

At the point of writing the watch was already more than 20 years old, what's another 10 years? ;)

Validation of the mediocrity principle[1]?

- If you don't know any other information, assume a thing will continue for as long as it has already existed.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle

Maybe it's just me but I don't like hanging things on my arms, it's uncomfortable and distracting.

Ah, yes. the "Casio" ... the monobloc of watches.

I prefer an traditional dial watch (I don't care if it's digital internally). Is there something similar? A cheap, durable, reliable watch with hour/minute/second hands?

Casio makes analog watches, too. They come in hundreds of designs and they're just as cheap and reliable as their digital counterparts.

Honestly your best bet would be to scroll a bit through /r/watches and the sidebar there.

If you have no interest in mechanical movements, then, Timex weekender is oft-recommended. https://www.timex.com/browse/collections/weekender/shop-all-... (if you're in the bay area, I'll sell you mine for 10$ )

The Timex Expedition is a more field-watchy variation: https://www.timex.com/browse/collections/expedition/

Casio makes some quartz (battery-powered) "diver" style watches: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083VMFR4C/

If you want to get into mechanical, that's a rapidly expanding "budget watch" space. Budget for mechanical for a good amount of time bottomed out at around 250$ for a seiko or orient, but now a lot of Chinese homage watches are pulling into the 100$ space, and of course there's always vostok.

Yes, the analog equivalent is the Casio MQ-24.

Seiko self-winding mechanical watches start at under $100.

I somehow misplaced mine. Some day, I’ll find it!

Citizen Eco-Drive (solar powered) available in a range of styles. Mine is also water resistant and keeps better time than any Casio I ever had (including their "radio controlled" version when it was out of range whilst traveling).

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