I’ve been wearing a Casio G-Shock watch since last August. I bought it in the USA whilst at WWDC 2006 in San Francisco. Big mistake. Looks good (see picture below), but is crap as a watch. Way too hard to read the time with a quick glance. Well for me anyway.
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So I’ve been thinking of getting a new watch with a simpler face for a few months. Prompted by a thread on the uk.comp.sys.mac newsgroup about what gadget people would buy with £100, I decided it was time (ha ha) to look for a new watch. Some time with Google, and the sub £100 budget, quickly narrowed the search down to one of the Casio Wave Ceptor range. Several in that range met the criteria I had:
- Simple, uncluttered face with numbers from 1 to 12 around the face
- Modern styling
- A gadgety or geeky aspect that doesn’t trump the two lines above
I went for this one for £89.99. It receives time updates by radio during the night. These are sent from a transmitter near Rugby in England, or one in Germany. Each will update watches with the correct time taken from an atomic clock in an area up to 1500Km from the transmitter. Areas outside a radius of 500Km can be in shadows etc. Where I live is within the 500Km radius of Rugby. It seems to work. The second hand on the watch and the second hand on the analogue clock shown within the MacOS X System Preferences are in perfect sync. The Mac gets it’s time from an Apple time source on the Internet. So unless they are both wrong then the radio updating seems to be the business. The strap of the new watch is made from very flexible black plastic, and as a result it takes on the shape of the wrist very well. So the watch is very comfortable to wear. It also does World Time so it’ll show the time in the UK when out of the country. This model doesn’t take it’s time from the USA based transmitters (just the European ones). Be interesting to see how it reacts when in the USA. Will probably have to set it manually to the US time zone. When back in the UK it should update the time automatically. It also charges via Solar (quick) or via artificial light (slowly). I’m well pleased 🙂 Anyone want a cheap G-Shock?
Here is a picture of the new watch:
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