11/18/2009

Review of Casio Men's Digital Sport Watch #W756-1AV

I was just looking for a simple sports watch with both a stopwatch and countdown timer, but this had a lot more than I expected (or needed). It has some timer features particularly for referees, which you may or may not find a use for. While all the features are easy enough to learn, having six modes means a lot of button presses (up to 6) to get back to the main mode. Fortunately, the main mode has a different beep sound, so you can keep pressing it quickly without looking until you hear it. It does what I need though with some complexity. Perhaps I will come to use the other features as well.

Looks: Nice; a bit thick for my taste (about 1/2"; spec says .58"), but it seems a lot of men's sports watches are like that these days
- The main picture shown above is misleading - there is NO blue backlight, but a cheapish orange LED that emits from left side over a dull gray background. The word "Illuminator" inscribed at the top of the watch is also misleading. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that supposed to be Casio's blue backlight technology? Maybe this watch used to have it, but not now. The LED works fine but does not look as nice
- Lens is not recessed so it is easy to scratch

Battery: 10-yr spec assumes use of any feature only once/week (a joke?)

Manual: Hard to read as it is very small and thick
- Get the free 3-page PDF manual which has all the info but is much easier to read, at the watch manual section of the casio site (enter 3100 for Module No.)

Stopwatch: I did not like it; it seems specialized for things like soccer
- Two counts displayed
- The Main count shows 100ths of sec but cannot be stopped at all (kind of useless). It can be set to beep after a specified elapsed time (like end of soccer regulation)
- The small count in corner (harder to read) acts like a standard stopwatch. No splits; just start, stop. It does not show 100ths of sec. In soccer, can use to count stoppage time

Preset countdown timer: Can choose from these times(min): 10,12,20,15,20,25,30,35,40,45
- Auto-repeat feature: If enabled, counts the number repeats (up to 99). If disabled, it just counts up after it hits zero and sounds the alarm, like most countdown timers do
- I like that the current time is in the corner so I don't have to switch modes to find out

Interval Countdown timer: You can use this as a regular countdown timer settable from 1 to 59 min, though I wish it could be set higher. There are also 8 additional timers which you can set individually. The watch will detect which timers are set and run them sequentially. You could use this for interval training or game timing.Auto-repeat can be set for the whole sequence.

World Clock: You can have this display the time in practically any other time zone. 3-letter codes for cities, and DST can be set separately for each

Alarm: Standard features, hourly chime

Other: Button beeps can be turned off

Overall: A decent watch, especially for the price. It's growing on me, I think.




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