A watch with a recessed crystal that won't get scratched
Written: Sep 16 '07 (Updated Oct 15 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rugged, accurate, water resistant to 200M, not as heavy as it looks.
Cons: Battery replacement could be relatively expensive. "Care and feeding" bothersome.
The Bottom Line: After five weeks, placing the watch near a window for updating, exposing to light for recharging and worry about expensive battery replacement, I returned the watch, downgraded my recommendation.
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| cartan's Full Review: Casio G-Shock MTG900DA-8V Wrist Watch for Men |
10/15/07 Update. After using this watch for five weeks, I decided to return it. I believe that Casio has turned this watch into another "Rube Goldberg". Isn't 20 seconds per month accuracy enough? For those who think they need accuracy +/- 1 second every day, wouldn't updating the time on-demand be better than five times per night? The frequent updating puts such a heavy drain on a battery that a coin battery wouldn't last. So a solar powered, rechargeable battery is required. Great in the summertime with short sleeves and long days. Will the long sleeves covering the watch and the short daylight hours provide enough energy for the battery to power the watch? Or will it have to be taken off and left on the window sill during the day to recharge itself? Maybe one needs another watch while this one is charging. One will certainly need another watch while this one is shipped back to Casio for the $30 rechargeable battery replacement after a few years.
I used to take my watch off at night and set it on the dresser. Now I have to remember to put it in that special place near the window every night so it will get its time update. Or the display will not show the high signal bars in the morning, and I'll feel like I missed something. A watch used to be something you would put on your wrist in the morning, look at it occasionally for the time, take it off at night and forget about it. Maybe you'd check it for accuracy once in a while. Now you have to coddle the watch, making sure it is in the right place for an update, giving it exposure to charge itself, shaking it to wake it up from a blank display.
In those five weeks, the watch held up well, not a scratch on it. But as I became less pleased with its bulk and the care and feeding of this watch, I was happy to find my receipt and return it to WalMart. (They should be pleased to get it back, as it was no longer on sale for $66, back up to $88).
Initial review:
After returning a Casio watch with automatic time adjustment because of poor design which allowed the crystal to be scratched easily, I was seduced by the somewhat bulky Casio MTG900DA-8V because of its recessed crystal and $66 price tag at WalMart, reduced from $88, carrying an initial list price of $150. In spite of its bulk, this g-shock watch is nice looking with its chrome finish and metal band.
In the "Timekeeping Mode", the watch displays the essential information I want in a digital watch; the time with hours, minutes and seconds, the month and day, and the day of the week. A few other tiny specks on the display indicate DST, AM/PM, Power Saving Mode, Alarm On. The display also includes the battery level and the signal strength of the last incoming time signal. All these bits of information are discretely placed around the edge of the display and a quick glance at the watch shows the time in large bold numbers across the center of the display.
The watch has four alarms and a snooze alarm. It can display the time in 30 cities around the world, and toggle easily between the local time and another time zone. One unique feature of the watch is the Time Recorder. A push of a button records the current time (month, day, hour, minute, second). Up to 30 events, numbered consecutively, can be recorded. The watch can be used as a stopwatch. No, it does not have a countdown timer.
The watch was preset to my time zone, including Daylight Saving Time, but being in the display case at WalMart, the time had not been updated in two months. The first challenge was to find a spot away from anything metal and away from any machinery or electronics that might interfere with the time signal from Ft. Collins, CO. A plastic picnic table in the middle of the back yard seemed to be the perfect spot, and the watch updated itself on the first try.
My next challenge was to remove four links from the metal watch band so that the watch would fit comfortably around my 7 1/4 inch circumference wrist. The pins were relatively easy to grab with a pair of needle nose tweezers in order to separate the links. There are adjustment positions on the clasp to fine tune the watch band to fit the wrist precisely.
When one opens the thick manual, equivalent to a stack of 50 business cards, the first page warns about the display going blank when the watch is in a dark area for a certain period of time. Further in the manual, it describes the conditions when this happens. The watch must be set to the Power Saving Mode. This is the factory default setting. Then, the watch must be in a dark environment, undisturbed for over 70 minutes, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. If the display goes blank, it will remain that way, even while getting an automatic time update, until the watch detects light, or a button is pushed, or the watch is moved. I question how much power is really saved by turning off an LCD display, compared to the power used by the watch attempting to get a time update five times per evening. The previous Casio watch I tried would attempt to get an update up to six times overnight, but once it was successful, would not attempt an update again that night. This watch attempts to get an update all five times over night, whether successful on the previous attempt or not. A waste of power?
Another power waster is the automatic backlight. When enabled, and in a darkened environment, a flick of the wrist turns the backlight on for a couple of seconds, whether you intended the light to come on or not. Using this feature for a few hours proved to me that it is an unnecessary waste of power, since a button, conveniently located at the six o'clock position on the watch, will turn the backlight on when you really want it on.
The watch touts a rechargeable battery that should last "many years" without the need for replacement. However, once the rechargeable battery fails to hold a charge or work properly, sending the watch back to Casio is recommended. This will cost about $30 plus shipping, about half the cost of the watch. Is it worth it? A search of the Internet revealed instructions for a do-it-yourself replacement of the rechargeable battery, and as one who has tinkered with many watches in the past, mostly replacing batteries, there is no way I would attempt to do this replacement myself. Open the back, and springs may go flying everywhere. One mistake and you could have a dead watch. I just hope that the rechargeable battery will outlast my enthusiasm for the watch, and by the time the battery dies, Casio may produce a non-solar automatic time update watch with a ten year battery. And a recessed crystal.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cartan
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Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 3 members
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