The people who will buy that watch don’t worry about throwing money away, they just want a smart-watch (probably running Android) with a Luxury brand-name slapped on the case. The people who actually appreciate precision time-pieces will buy a mechanical Tag or another brand, which start around $1,500.
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If I don’t wear mine for a while I just shake it a bit and it springs back to life. As for cleaning, it is pretty well sealed against dirt. At least it doesn’t have a capacitor that needs occasional replacement, or a lithium battery waiting to burn your house down.
Just a heads up, the main reason automatics need to be cleaned is to replace the oil, otherwise it will start losing more and more time. They usually recommend five years, which IMO is unnecessarily often. I had mine cleaned around ten years, but a friend had his cleaned after almost 20.
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We all lose time as we grow older, I don’t see that as a problem to be solved but rather something to learn to live with and even savor.
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Very nice! I literally cannot read the name “Casio” without thinking of this exact scene. I haven’t seen this movie since 1990. Amazing what sticks with you.
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Fair enough. I want my nice automatic to be in heirloom condition when I kick the can.
Yes, how very quaint. I have a number of those quaint timepieces, several of them don’t even have batteries! Imagine that. One of them is over forty years old, all it needs is to be kept wound up. I’m wondering just how long your oh so on-trend smart watch will actually last…
FWIW, I paid £50 for that watch, one recently sold at auction for £3800.
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sigh…watch snobbery has come to Boing Boing.
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I prefer this smart watch @SeamusBellamy 
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-Mens-CA53W-1-Calculator-Watch/dp/B000GB1R7S/
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Was about to chime in with the same. I’m on year 8 on my SKX013KN (mid sized seiko diver) and it’s still going strong. A cleaning would cost approximately what the watch did so I’m a little confused at people saying to get them serviced roughly every 2 to 5 years or so.
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Yeah, some watches are a lot more expensive to have cleaned. I think it’s a combination of marketing and trying to keep them as accurate as possible. But if I need accuracy down to the second, I’ll wear my Casio.
The capacitor in my Seiko Kinetic fails every ten years. Maybe the storage device in the Citizen will as well.
I had my Garmin Fenix for a year, hiked hundreds of miles with it and replaced it with my Fenix 3HR, hiked a couple hundred miles with it, ran a couple hundred more and it was my trusty companion out in the woods. Now I’ve got the Fenix 5X Plus and love it. These are fitness watches first, smart watches second. The health metrics these things collect are amazing and I get my notifications too. I don’t see this thing going obsolete in a few years, I could still be using my original Fenix but wanted the additional fitness tracking. Now? I don’t see any reason I won’t have the 5X for several years.
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Alas my poor Pebble Time 2. It’s still working just fine (two years on), but I know that should that ever change, there’s no possibility of repair or replacement. Eventually the battery will fail and that will be that.
Unfortunately it looks like the smartwatch market has moved towards fitness trackers, or wrist-mounted-smart-phones. As far as I can tell there’s no basic smartwatches that just tell the time, and display notifications out there : (
(I’m assuming that no one in this thread will agree with me that the best watch is, objectively, a £20 basic Casio, because it does everything a watch should do. And I say that as someone with many watches tucked away in drawers all over the place, only one of which is a somewhat basic Casio)
Quite possibly. I infer that you had the capacitor replaced, maybe more than once? How much did it cost?
I will, with some caveats. I own a basic analog Casio, and in terms of accurate timetelling it would be hard to beat. Over a lifetime, a series of Casios would probably be the lowest-cost option, although a Timex that cost twice as much but lasted three times as long would beat them.
OTOH, the durability and water resistance of the Casio are marginal, and my usual watch-killing method is to fall in a lake, so if I’m around water I wear my $100 Citizen. Also, I like the day/date feature common to more expensive watches, and I don’t care for digitals. So the Casio is a backup for me.
For real! I bought an analog Casio for $30 or $35 2 years ago and it’s still working just fine. More than I can say for the Timex I had before that – didn’t even last that long, at twice the price. It was slightly more waterproof than cotton candy.
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They don’t make the DataLink anymore, do they?
160 AUD for a full service, both times I had it done. That was from a Seiko dealer or repair center. Next time I will use this independent shop I know.
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I won’t, only because I think a $10 basic Casio is even better.
