CasioMen's W201-1AV Alarm Chronograph Watch

Casio still makes great, inexpensive digital watches in the low end of their range that work very well. I was initially looking at an F91 as a lightweight digital watch, but I think this watch is better constructed and has a lot of usable improvements over the F91.-- Build Quality and Case --The watch is extremely light and thin enough to fit under a shirt sleeve. The resin band will fit on small 6 inch wrists all the way up into the 8 inch range. The band does seem very soft and likely to break after significant wear though. It does use actual springbars instead of pins which means it should be easy to replace the strap if you want to. I tried to see if I could fit a thin nylon NATO strap on it, but there wasn't enough space.The watch is labeled as having a mineral crystal on Amazon, but I can't find any evidence of that anywhere else. If it scratches up like acrylic, I'll add a note to the review later.EDIT: It's definitely acrylic, but it won't scratch that easily. Mine has a few tiny little scratches that could probably be buffed out.The buttons are all plastic and slightly recessed, which makes setting times and alarms a bit inconvenient, but not difficult.-- Watch Features --The display is nice and clean with slightly larger digits (this watch is pretty easy to read). In the Alarm and Dual-Time modes, the date display will show the home time instead. The stopwatch works as expected, going all the way up to 24 hours(!), but you don't get to see the time simultaneously. You can just switch modes if you need to.The amber LED (which uses a lot less power than a blue EL backlight) illuminates the watch just fine and can be temporarily extended to stay on for 3 seconds.There's only one alarm, but it can't be set for a specific day or month like some G-Shocks. It's also kind of quiet. Treat it more as a reminder than something to wake you up. There's also the usual hourly chime. And for those who might be wondering, you can't mute the button press sounds.Sadly, there is no countdown timer.-- Conclusion --I'm really impressed with this watch. It makes a nice, lightweight beater watch for travel or work that you won't have to worry about for around 1/4 the price of an entry-level G-Shock. The build quality is pretty good given the extremely low price - Just be prepared that the band might fail on you after a year or two.

I first became aware of Casio watches about 1980. I had noticed people wearing the black plastic watches and wondered: What is this? Can't these people afford a real watch? I always wore my Omega Seamaster and regarded it as one of the finer watches. Well, at just about that same time I started running and a friend who was guiding me in the sport suggested that I'd need a chronograph in order to time my runs. My Omega wouldn't do. I bought a Casio, which was just about the only brand available at that time. I wore it off and on for about a week, and my Omega Seamaster was from then on gathering dust in my dresser drawer. The Casio was just amazing, and it only cost about 25 1980 dollars. Well, I'm now on about my fifth Casio Chronograph, and I'm still amazed by it and this one cost only a little over 13 2012 dollars.These little Casios will wear out, as will anything. I find that for me they go in two places. One is the battery, and it can be replaced. This new one has a 10-year battery which is excellent. The other is the band will break, usually sometime after about five or six years. Well, the band can be replaced also. I have found, however, that the watch is so inexpensive that when it starts to break down, I just throw the watch away and buy a new one. That might seem a bit wasteful, but if you're averaging six years of use out of it, that's only about $2 a year and why diddle around with it?The Casio Chronograph is just an amazing piece of equipment. If it's a timepiece you want, well, you just can't get much better, and it's just dirt cheap. Amazing! Let the others wear their Omegas and their Rolexes. I'll proudly wear my Casio Chronograph and know they can't beat it. It's a form of reverse snobbery.Gary Peterson

My Casio W201-1 AV may be the best watch I’ve owned.At 10mm, the case is relatively thin. The crystal is glass to resist scratching. It has the thinnest, most supple resin band I remember. That makes it easy to put on and comfortable to wear. Resin bands often break where they are flexed to buckle. This more flexible band may last longer. If not, it looks easy to replace.When I check my watch indoors in low light or in the available light outdoors at night, my left hand may not be free to use the backlight. The display is pretty easy to read in low light because the digits are well shaped and the background is pretty light. (Seconds can be hard to read in low light.)Out of the box, it was unacceptable. I almost threw it away.For me, the stopwatch has always been the real advantage of digital over analog. By 2015 I’d owned at least 10 digital watches, made by Timex and Casio. The stopwatches always worked flawlessly, at least until they got old.In 2015 I bought a Timex and discovered that if I prepared it to time an event, and the event didn’t start within 60 seconds, it would switch back to the time of day. That and other glaring design faults were so disgusting that I quit wearing a watch, although that was inconvenient.In 2017, I tried a Casio W96H. The stopwatch didn’t always start or stop when I pressed the button. I thought I’d get the hang of it, but after a few weeks of frustration, I put it to one side.At first, the W201 seemed worse. Because the buttons were flush with the sides, I couldn’t see them unless I looked from the side, and pressing might not depress them enough to work them.If I got my fingertip under a button (toward the back of the watch), it worked beautifully. That worked fine for the mode, reset, and light buttons, but groping for the start/stop button made it difficult to time something to the second.As an experiment, I used a toothpick to put a dab of JB Weld on the start/stop button so it would be about 1mm higher. I applied only a tiny dab and left the watch with the button toward the floor so the epoxy wouldn’t flow around the button. I figured I could ruin the watch, but I was going to throw it away, anyway.As I’d feared, the epoxy flowed around the button. After it set up for two hours, I used my smallest jeweler’s screwdriver, with a blade 1mm wide, to remove the JB Weld that had filled in around the button. It was as easy as scraping away modeling clay.After the stuff on top hardened, I had a great watch. I could feel the bump instantly, and the button functioned every time I pushed it. I value a watch that functions well. If something happened to this watch, I might buy another W201 and again take the risk of adding a dab of epoxy.Otherwise, I’d be wary of buying a new Casio or Timex. For forty years, every digital Timex or Casio I bought, functioned well. Now their designs seem careless.Out of curiosity, I also bought a Casio F-91W, introduced in 1991. If they’re still selling them after 27 years, that says something about the quality. The display is small and the crystal is plastic, but I could live with that. It’s legible. The case is thinner than the W201, and the band is almost as supple. The buttons are easy to see and feel, and they work every time. Now I have two acceptable watches.

I like it.