I test the best smartwatches – so why am I wearing a $15 Casio?
techradar.comImportantly, F91W can run FOSS software with a custom board [1], which also makes it easily programmable in C with no "app store" shit. I have two boards sitting next to me and two Casio watches waiting for a transplant.
Hmm, this is like saying "The '69 Mustang can run on electric power, if you replace the engine."..
Sure, apart from one is a $20 watch and an insignificant investment of time and energy versus a lot of expensive, risky hoops with a high-level of skill to pull off. People always lean on this analogy of cars, but frequently there's no analogy required. The watch mod isn't for you and that's fine.
Thanks for the condensation. It's just a philosophical comment along the lines of the Ship of Theseus, can it still be called the F91W if you replace a major component? Especially saying "Ah yeah the F91W can run custom software, just gut it out add a component to run that software!".
Maybe philosophy isn't for you, and that's fine.
If you swap out the CPU on your computer, is your computer still the same computer? Something has changed. Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at a model name like an F91W is that it's a configuration of components. Ergo, an "F91W configuration can be modified to do xyz". Is it based off of an F91W? Yup. The information that's being conveyed is that if you own a cheap F91W, for a few bucks in parts and a little time, you can do something interesting with it.
That’s intriguing. What kinds of modifications are you making to them in C?
I was disapointed by the default firmware: it adds noticable lag and is missing polish (for ex you can no longer hold buttons down for repeated press). I mean to write my own some day but realistically speaking that'll never happen.
Ehh the F91W is not very accurate at all as the article claims.
It's not temperature compensated. If you leave it lying on a desk at room temperature yes. Wear it outside in all weather it'll be pretty inaccurate.
I prefer the F-105W myself. It's basically the same watch but with a great blue EL backlight.
W-800H is my daily-wear cheap watch here
I had a Pebble and then an Apple Watch. I came to the conclusion I prefer my watches to be tools and not devices. Watches that are tools are cool. Aviation watches, dive watches, etc etc. So much cooler than a smartwatch.
The F-91W is a cult classic but lacks a lot of nice features (for example, a backlight that stays on for a couple seconds after you release the button, alarm snooze, and dual time display).
I love my W-800H though. Still has a 10 year battery, nearly as compact size, and similar aesthetics.
I’ve gone through a couple over the years (the biggest flaw is the band), but my current one is incredibly accurate. Using a high speed camera, I measured 1.43 seconds loss over 6 months. Pretty sure I won the Quartz lottery since that’s much more accurate than spec, but either way I’m happy.
To give a counterpoint, I have worn watches every day for the past 20 years and own both a nice Bauhaus watch, a diver and a cheap field watch. I finally decided to buy an Apple Watch last year to mostly use as a running watch and see what the fuss was about. I’m never coming back. This thing cut my phone use like nothing before. Having access to notifications at a glance without taking your phone out is awesome.
I don't like the Apple watch because of the alerts.
I wish it had geofencing and other custom rules so I could say "give me these notifications all the time, and these other ones when I'm away from home, these when I'm in the office", etc.
Otherwise every notification I get during the average workday happens on my Mac, my iPhone, and my Watch at the same time. It's like sensory overload making every little thing seem like an emergency. So in conclusion I really don't enjoy the ding ding ding of my watch all the time. It makes it extremely hard to disconnect when even your watch is harassing you. I tried turning off all notifications, but then it's less functional than a normal watch.
The new DND custom features are almost there. Maybe in a couple years...
I'll admit it was nice when I was biking 40mi routes regularly or running for use with Strava or something, but I can just bring my phone...
Also trying to do any input on the watch is so painful.
Idea is great, execution is still so far away from where it should be.
Yeah I'd love this too on my phone even. That when I'm home my phone stays silent and just sends me notifications to my computer which is always on anyway.
Yes! Everyone reading this that wants a Casio: just get the f-105w
I went from f91w to the illuminator and it’s much nicer for the backlight
>> The movement is also notoriously accurate. So accurate, in fact, that it’s been infamously used in bomb making, to the point where US intelligence agents declared it to be ‘the sign of al-Qaeda (opens in new tab)’ in training material issued to staff at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2011
Or maybe because it is (and it's clones) are available everywhere for $1?
How many seconds of time accuracy have you found that this watch loses over the course of its 7-year-long battery life? I think I can handle it losing 30 seconds of accuracy per year.
I read Casio promises 30 sec/month but (lucky?) customers report losing 2 seconds per month.
I know its a cheap watch but would it be that hard to have a settings for it? I hear people tuned antique pendulum clocks to seconds per year. I suppose it helps that they are inaccurate enough to have tuning?
It's more like 30 per month. It really depends a lot how much you wear it outside because it's not temperature compensated.
I don't really mind a lot because I will just adjust it once in a while. But I wouldn't claim it to be an accurate movement.
Oh, it's adjustable!? In that case, who cares?
Of course you can just set the time again when it's wrong.
It doesn't have an adjustable offset no. But it doesn't work like that because it's temperature dependent anyway. So the offset is not stable.
Battery may be long lasting but the straps seem to last about 12 months before breaking. And cost of repairs is about the same as purchase price of the watch.
I now have a preferred strap that I attach to whatever watch I get, expecting built-in strap to fail long before the watch.
I have a Sensor Watch, which is an ARM cortex processor and SDK which retrofits into an F91W. It’s really nicely put together and offers a lot of flexibility. https://www.sensorwatch.net/
I have an Apple Watch S5 lying around on my desk but I still pretty much exclusively wear one of a few cheap Casios I have.
I found more and more that the features I use on a watch (current time, 3 min timer for tea, 25 min pomodoro timer, wake up alarm) are basically universally covered by every digital watch ever manufactured, and are normally MUCH easier to access on those watches than an Apple Watch, and I assume most smart watches.
The health tracking is the only compelling feature I make use of on an Apple Watch IMO, otherwise it annoyingly fiddly to the point where I just use my phone.
> normally MUCH easier to access on those watches than an Apple Watch
You should try placing them as widgets on a compatible watch face, or set them be sticky in your recents app's list, if you haven't already.
Hard to beat two clicks on the mode button, then one click on start button to start the last timer I used. Just an uncustomizable appliance, which is nice when I don’t want to fiddle with something much.
On the other hand I can’t fathom a better workout partner than my Apple Watch. A few seconds from racking the weights or whatever I can fire up my rest timer with 1 press and mute the vibration with another press when it’s time to get back to lifting. This works great when you want to do some interval of rest paired later with intervals of activity. Having favorited a few timers I can reach them within 1 to 2 presses. I haven’t found a similar watch with a range of timers that are as easy to use.
what i would like is a fitness/health-tracking wearable that does not have a screen.
i want a faceless waves hands bracelet something on my wrist that will track all of my health & bio stats and sends it to/syncs it with my phone.
Whoop and Oura are two prominent ones. There are a bunch others.
This is what I’m looking for, but I also need the device to only store the collected metrics on my phone, and not send it to some company’s servers. So far I think it’s just the Apple watches that meet that criteria.
Also any watches that work with gadgetbridge.
What you want is a Withings ScanWatch
Yup. Absolutely long for a smaller/better version of the original jawbone. I have a watch, I love it. I'd wear a fitness tracker on the other wrist if it didn't look like a watch (or a fitness tracker).
I was about to say “Like a Fitbit?”, but apparently they all have screens now.
Add a small haptic/vibe motor to give me notification buzzes (perhaps a pseudo-morse code to indicate type of notification) and I’d be immediately sold.
Perhaps a way to DIY this? I wonder how to get motors that small…
I feel uncomfortable with any band on my wrist. What I want is health tracker anklet that lasts over a month.
It’s called a Whoop, check it out.
$30/month subscription for a fitness tracker? Ew
I always find it interesting that so many people that work in tech are quite into retro Luddite stuff. I’m not entirely not guilty myself - I love me some old school manual transmission sports cars more than the latest Tesla.
But I find genuine utility in having a smartphone and smartwatch. I have a relatively expensive mechanical watch but it rarely sees use other than date nights. The time is usually off, and I don’t care because that’s not the point. I don’t use it to keep time - that’s what my iPhone is for. Instead, the watch is purely jewlery, no different from my wife’s bracelet.
On the other hand my Apple Watch stays on my wrist almost perpetually.
I too hear about watches like the F91 or various g-shocks and get tempted to pick one up out of curiosity. But I know it’s going to be even less useful to me than my expensive automatic watch since it can’t even function as jewelry.
I’ve got a Garmin 7x. Sometimes I think about switching to something like this as I’m going through an unhealthy phase and not utilising the smart watch capability very much. However, I can’t give up the torch. I cannot believe how handy it is having a torch two button clicks away on my wrist, wherever I am, as opposed to fumbling in my pocket or searching around for my phone or a torch. Use it every day, absolute game changer.
I have the Garmin Epix gen 2. It doesn't have the edge flashlight of the 7x, but I like the light it does have, especially at the bright red setting. It's enough for me to see by without messing up my night vision. The double click access is great. And, with my current settings, I love the 14 day battery life of this compared with the approximately 1 day of my prior Apple Watch 6. I also like that I can switch iOS/Android without having to get a different watch to use with the other phone.
Casio stainless steel version is pretty dope.
RIP Pebble. Still the best smart watch
I go back and forth. The better battery life and face size of the Apple Watch Ultra makes it more useful for me than my old Apple Watch 3. But I still just wear a $30 Timex Expedition a lot of the time.
Another question:
I wear a $15 Casio - so why am I reviewing smartwatches?
tldr; the answer to the clickbait: "I’m having a rest before another challenge crops up, and I really don’t want to think about my heart rate variability, whether I slept well, or even have notifications on my wrist at all – I just want to give my brain a break. "
I'm guessing that the only reason he wore it to be able to write this article with this headline.