I spent years looking for my perfect travel watch after being bit by the watch bug. After looking for years (literally 10 years), I’ve found it and couldn’t be happier… the Casio world time.
My first thought was to go for a GMT, but those can’t handle time zones that aren’t on the hour, like India. Trying to find a mechanical watch that solves for this is very difficult. I was stuck in this purgatory for so long.
I don’t remember what led me to the Casio, but whatever it was made me completely reevaluate what I wanted out of the watch. The quartz movement became a feature, thanks to the 10 year battery. I can grab it and go whenever I need, and change the battery whenever I renew my passport. The low cost is a feature, as I don’t have to treat it well or worry about it, or worry that it will make me a target. If anything happens, oh well, it was $40. It has 37(?) timezones and can handle the odd ones, and handles DST independently for each timezone. Its fantastic. I don’t think any mechanical watch can do what it does, and if one can, it would cost more than my house and take the better part of a day to set.
The Casio is one of the cheapest watches I own, but whenever I put it on it makes me so happy, because it reminds me I finally solved my travel watch problem. I just finished my first trip with it and already saw the value of the independent DST function.
I’ve found some mod sites that sell nicer cases and bands to make it more durable, but I decided that defeats some of the purpose, as the cheapness is a feature. It was helpful to find out an eraser can be used to remove some of the ridiculous text on the case. That makes it look much better.
Not just in watchmaking but in general I agree with this idea that the cheapness is in and of itself, a feature. Like, not only because you can afford it, but the fact that something is so inexpensive actually enhances my enjoyment of it, or rather, something being very expensive detracts from it. It's the same with, say, bicycles. Yeah, people can fork over $5k for a carbon fiber state of the art road bike, but then it weighs on you when you take it out. Don't want to lean it against anything, worried taking it downtown in case someone mugs you for it, can't leave it out to pop into the shop. You end up just not even having a good time, compared to a beater.
Same for cars, furniture, instruments, etc.
I don’t think they have anything that solves the non-standard time zone problem.
At $500, it’s moving into a market segment where I’m going to care if something happens to it. I want to be carefree on vacation.
In this particular case, the Casio is unapologetically quartz. I don’t think I’m settling here, and it’s not a cheap watch pretending to be a more expensive watch. It’s a cheap beater watch that also happens to have a world time function. With an analog watch, I’d feel like I was settling for quartz… unless it’s a Spring Drive or F.P. Journe.
At home I have some nice automatics that I general wear. For these, I prefer a very simple aesthetic, a no-date dial is ideal. Citizen tends to have very busy designs.
They receive a signal from an atomic clock on a regular basis to sync up and avoid drift. Between those signal, they use a quartz movement to keep time.
I recently got a russet brown Vario strap for my silver "Casio Royale" and I do rather like it. I'm not ashamed to admit I prefer cheap and cheerful digital watches to pedigree analog watches. We are programmers/electronics folks after all. I got a Sensor Watch Lite board for my F-91W after reading about it here on HN and it's brilliant. I've written a bunch of hobby-related complications for it.
I love the look of the Casio World Time with some of the screen color filter mods. Those are quite inexpensive if you're willing to install them yourself.
My first thought was to go for a GMT, but those can’t handle time zones that aren’t on the hour, like India. Trying to find a mechanical watch that solves for this is very difficult. I was stuck in this purgatory for so long.
I don’t remember what led me to the Casio, but whatever it was made me completely reevaluate what I wanted out of the watch. The quartz movement became a feature, thanks to the 10 year battery. I can grab it and go whenever I need, and change the battery whenever I renew my passport. The low cost is a feature, as I don’t have to treat it well or worry about it, or worry that it will make me a target. If anything happens, oh well, it was $40. It has 37(?) timezones and can handle the odd ones, and handles DST independently for each timezone. Its fantastic. I don’t think any mechanical watch can do what it does, and if one can, it would cost more than my house and take the better part of a day to set.
The Casio is one of the cheapest watches I own, but whenever I put it on it makes me so happy, because it reminds me I finally solved my travel watch problem. I just finished my first trip with it and already saw the value of the independent DST function.
I’ve found some mod sites that sell nicer cases and bands to make it more durable, but I decided that defeats some of the purpose, as the cheapness is a feature. It was helpful to find out an eraser can be used to remove some of the ridiculous text on the case. That makes it look much better.