REVIEWING THE CASIO CA-53W

It seems that I've gone into spring cleaning mode, last weekend I 
did the car interior and the carpets, this weekend the bathroom and 
kitchen, then I've started today by defrosting the fridge. Somehow 
it, or more likely the sudden change to warmer weather, has put me 
into a dopey sort of mood. For certain I don't feel like beginning 
the task of researching political parties for the Nov. 26th state 
election, which was going to be my main weekend job. So instead 
I've decided to break all illusions of depth in my writing and give 
you a product review on my wristwatch.

In the sense of traditional reviews, this one is probably a bit 
late. For one thing, I've been wearing this watch almost every day 
for over a decade now, and for another, the model was introduced 
all the way back in 1988. I bought it new somewhere around a decade 
ago, and it has therefore accompanied me for all of my adult life. 
The fact that it's a calculator-watch also rather suggests the type 
of adult that I grew into.

Although I don't really remember much about them, I've still got 
various other watches that I wore through childhood, all pretty 
cheap and long-dead. I've got no idea what put me onto the 
existance of calculator watches, as I'm pretty sure I'd never seen 
one, even on TV, but I definately did my research on the web. 
Transitioning to a good brand, and a correspondingly meaningful 
price, was something that I took very seriously, even as a teenager 
(comparing with all my research and reasoning about buying that 
Atomic Pi SBC shows how little I've changed in this regard). As 
such, I didn't do it. I decided to order a cheap no-name calculator 
watch from China for less than a fifth of the price, and see how I 
liked it before comitting to a real one.

So I started off with a Xinjia X-628, then the typical result of 
searching by price for calculator watches on Ebay. It was 
predictably poor quality, but served me quite well. Compared with 
the Casio, it actually had more calculating functions - square root 
and percent, but the print on the buttons soon started wearing off 
and it looks like what finally sealed its fate was the mounting 
point of the watch band breaking away. In the intervening years the 
LCD has 'bled', doubtless a symptom of poor quality manufacture, so 
it's no longer usable.

The X-628 therefore followed much the same path as the other dodgy 
watches that I'd worn previously. But it had convinced me that a 
calculator watch was generally useful. Although it stood out enough 
at school that the teachers were well onto me taking it into 
calculator-free tests, the convenience of having a calculator on my 
wrist was obvious in general life. Of course by this stage everyone 
else had calculators on their mobile phones, though the likes of my 
mother probably weren't entirely aware of this fact yet. I was 
already resolute in my dislike for those gadgets though (even 
before they became 'smart'), not to mention socially lacking much 
of an application for them.

But mental arithmatic has never been my strong point, I always 
forget the numbers involved while I'm working things out and end up 
with wildly inaccurate results. Therefore even if I do get it 
right, I have to do it again to be sure. I do still try to test 
myself by doing sums in my head from time to time, because I'm well 
aware that the more I rely on the calculator, the worse my mental 
skills will get. But even then it's handy to check with the 
calculator afterwards because I never really trust myself.

So after a mostly-forgotten saga of trying to work out the cheapest 
supplier (I mainly just remember an awkward conversation trying to 
get a quote in a jewlery shop - still I think the only time I've 
ever been into one of those), I got the Casio - both my first 
decent watch, and decent calculator-watch.

Design-wise, with the Casio CA-53W it's a little easier to press 
individual buttons, though it's still all a matter of pressing the 
button you want _more_ than the buttons around it. The buttons are 
much more solid on the Casio and don't have any print on them to 
wear off, but neither watch has any tactile feedback as you press 
them. The Casio tries to solve this by beeping when each button 
press is registered, though having already gotten used to fumbling 
on the other watch's keypad, I turned this off to save battery life.

One frustrating part of the X-628 was that the watch and calculator 
functions were completely separate (I suspect they might have been 
separate chips entirely). That meant the time and alarm couldn't be 
set using the keypad. I use the alarm a lot, so the fact that the 
Casio allows quickly setting it from the keypad is vastly more 
convenient. Actually the one thing that I could really do with 
would be support for setting multiple alarms, but at least it makes 
it quick to set the next alarm after the first one goes off. The 
more integrated design also allows for better use of screen area. 
Although the X-628 actually has a slightly taller screen, it's 
always split between the time and calculator displays - on the 
Casio you switch modes from one to the other by pressing the button 
on the side.

Other functions of the Casio are the stopwatch and a second clock 
for different timezones. The stopwatch is sometimes handy, and 
works quite well, though I've never bothered to figure out all its 
lap-timing functions because I'm not sporty. The second timezone 
isn't really much use for me because I keep all my international 
communications as asynchronous as possible.

Physically the watch itself has withstood some remarkably rough 
treatment. It's been dropped, knocked about, vibrated, exposed the 
smoke heat and water of fires, covered in mud, animal poo, sawdust, 
and old grease. It does show the scars for sure - all the edges 
have that worn and rounded look to them, and there are a few 
scrapes on the front, including the screen. Although it's probably 
most obviously inappropriate for farmwork, I think the most damage 
has been taken while I've been working on the Jag. These days I try 
to remember to take it off before trying to reach around the car's 
mechanics, but it's easy to forget and space is always so tight 
that it always gets clattered against bits of metal while I'm 
trying to dive deep towards some problematic part. By luck, it was 
only recently that in such a situation I caused a truely 
obstructing scrape on the screen, yet it's still easily readable.

The battery has also lasted exceptionally well. Over ten years on, 
and with the calculator getting a fair bit of use, I still haven't 
needed a new battery in it. But the weak spot has been the watch 
bands. I bought it with a rubber watch band, and indeed I've always 
been accustomed to them compared to the coldness of metal bands, 
but this long-lasting watch has taught me how short-lived rubber 
watch bands tend to be. The original only lasted a few years, after 
which I bought a generic replacement, and at this point the band I 
use is probably at least the fifth. As someone who hates to buy new 
items, this regular consumption of watch bands frustrates me a lot, 
but I haven't found a solution for it. It always strikes me how 
they come feeling so subtile and rubbery, then end up stiff and 
brittle, I guess it's just the state of material technology. I 
wonder whether it's sweat, UV, or just exposure to air that causes 
it though.

Anyway, the band isn't anything specific to the watch itself, and 
if I could learn to live with a stainless steel watch band, then 
maybe it wouldn't be a problem at all. Overall it's turned out 
excellent value for money (though I don't really have much clue 
what I paid for it except from current online pricing in the 
$35-$60 range), and a reliable companion for someone who still 
refuses more modern personal electronic accessories.

That said, these last couple of years it has faced occasional 
competition from an old self-winding mechanical wristwatch that I 
was given among some more of my late grandfather's things. I might 
talk some more about that watch itself in another post, but I've 
taken it on in something of a symbolic role. The precision and 
calculator functionality of the Casio is what I rely on most days, 
but when I want to go for a drive or just not achieve anything 
technical, then I don't need those functions and therefore I wear 
the mechanical watch. Plus it does help to break the mental 
dependence that I've inevitably developed on the calculator, and 
digital time representation.

 - The Free Thinker.

PS. The Casio CA-53W is noted online for its appearances in the 
Back to the Future movies, as well as a few other successful movies 
and TV shows. So it's funny how the dodgy Xinjia X-628 model (also 
apparantly branded as the Kenko KK628) actually found its way into 
a similarly dodgy 2012 horror movie:
https://www.watch-id.com/sightings/kenko-kk628-calculator-watch-devon-bostick-dead-dawn
https://www.watch-id.com/search?search_api_multi_fulltext=CA-53W