It's great!
I checked out dozens of watch stores in several major Polish cities, as well as the entire range on Allegro, AliExpress, Ceneo... and the websites of various watch retailers.
It had to be within the 500–600 PLN range, max. 800, but that would have been a bit too much. I settled on this particular model. It’s one of the few that meets my criteria (undoubtedly, there are as many tastes as there are customers...;))
:
+ Black/dark dial
+ Leather strap (brown is a must)
+ Metal case, preferably non-shiny
+ Date display in a window
+ Arabic numerals
+ Water-resistant for swimming
+ Chronograph scale
+ Chronograph hands legible, analog, non-glossy
+ 2nd time zone (useful for my work)
+ Fully analog (not counting the power source, but that’s a plus for quartz, since they’re quite accurate)
+ Easy to read, high contrast, so that a quick glance is enough for a precise reading of the time or date
+ Dial backlight
+ Good glass, domed with the right curvature, scratch-resistant here—I’ve only had it for about a month, and so far there are no marks on the case or glass.
- Loud operation...
I’ll start with the only downside.... Believe me, there’s criticism of this model’s movement on English-language forums as well, and indeed, in almost perfectly quiet conditions, you can hear it from as far as 40–50 cm away, which is annoying. Of course, you don’t hear it during the day, but when I go to bed... I put it in a drawer or on a desk 2 meters away. For comparison, I tested a few other Casio watches at home; none of them were audible—it had to be perfectly silent for me to hear anything even when pressing them firmly against my ear. I think this is a major drawback, but it fits me best out of all the ones I’ve seen—so I work around the problem in other ways ;)
As for everything else, it’s perfect for me.
The strap is comfortable, the case isn’t too thick or too heavy, and I forget I’m even wearing it during the day—so that’s a plus.
Visually, it’s exactly what I was looking for, so that’s great too. The hands contrast sharply with the background, as do the numerals, so reading the time is very quick and easy. The date window is also great; the frame draws the eye better, and its trapezoidal shape and the numerals are very interesting.
The second time zone displayed on the upper left lever is helpful at work; sure, you could remember the time difference for a given zone, but here you have the convenience of a constant display—and importantly, it doesn’t come at the expense of the size of the main hands.
Setting the time is also interesting. When you pull out the 3-position crown, you hear two distinct clicks, which confirms the selected position. As for the alignment of the minutes with the fractions on the dial, you have to get it just right for it to work; there’s no super-precise calibration of the hands relative to the dial. Importantly, the minute and hour hands are perfectly aligned with each other on the dial. The second hand, of course, measures 60 seconds on the dial, though there is no super-precise alignment with the dial here, and sometimes it lines up with it, and other times it doesn’t. This isn’t a problem, though, because after syncing it to an atomic clock, there wasn’t even a 1-second discrepancy after a few days.
Chronograph—a very interesting feature for me. Its limit in this model is 4 hours, after which it stops, which is more than enough for me. Of course, I’m not likely to need to count production units, but as a fun fact, you can check by how much a car’s speedometer overestimates speed on a straight road based on speed limit signs, or quickly check how many km/h the car was going in a dashcam recording. Personally, I often use it for timing things, e.g., when I buy a parking ticket, I turn it on, and while running errands, I can see how much time has passed. There are more examples like this, so for me, the assumption that this feature isn’t just a gimmick that increases the mechanism’s complexity, the case thickness, and the purchase price holds true. The chronograph hand’s accuracy is 1/20 of a second—more than sufficient. The lower right hand tells us how many minutes have passed since the start of the measurement (0–10), and the upper hand counts up to 4 hours at a rate of 10 minutes per mark. I also like that the chronograph dial is inscribed under the glass rather than on the edge of the case—which, in my opinion, would slightly mar the watch’s appearance.
As for water resistance—100 m/10 bar of static pressure—in practice, the dynamic pressure far exceeds that, so you can swim or snorkel in it. That’s enough—I’ve gotten it wet a few times and it works. Given the nice leather strap, I probably won’t swim with it, though who knows—summer is ahead of us...
As for the backlight—because of the black dial, it’s only visible in the dark, but it gets the job done. Models with a light-colored dial perform much better in this regard, though I definitely like this one more and will definitely use it more often during the day :).
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The administrator of your personal data is the owner of the Watchard store, i.e. 57 Concepts Sp. z o.o. Sp. k. with the registered office at al. Witosa 31, lok. 115, 00-710 Warsaw, Poland. Providing personal data by the Customer is voluntary but necessary to complete the purchase. You have the right to view your personal data we have processed, as well as the right to request changes or removal of your personal data. Personal data will be processed for a period of 10 years.
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