PixlBit

There's no greater feeling than looking down at your wrist, and, without thinking, know exactly what time it is. I went for years with just an analogue watch, then no watch at all, and let me tell you, I never want to go back!

The guesswork on an analogue is complete chaos: "So the little hand is between the 1 and the 2, so it's the 1 o'clock hour, and the big hand is about 2/3 of the way between 12 and 5 so that makes it 1:03. Or maybe 1:04??"

Now imagine having no watch at all, needing to rely on the arduous task of pulling a cell phone out of your pocket and checking the time that way? Insane. That is .75 seconds completely wasted, multiplied by several times during the day, minus the battery power wasted. At best it's a recipe for chaos, with a side order of cluelessness.

So, to finally get back to modernity, I ordered a Casio Men's W800H-1AV Classic Digital Sport Watch from Amazon.com for about $12 and am pretty happy with it so far. She's a real beauty with everything I look for in a watch.



With one swoop of my eyes, I can see the exact time, seconds, month/day/year, the day of the week, and whether the hourly chime/alarm is activated--without thinking. This isn't that big of a deal, but just today I was buying some milk and couldn't really remember which day it was and whether the expiration date was acceptable or not; looked down and BOOM. The date is right there where you need it. Didn't even need to hunt down a television with the news scrawl/date/time on the bottom.

As if telling time weren't enough, the W800H-1AV (the 800H means it registers an 800 on the Hawtness scale) goes above and beyond the call of duty in ways great and small. The bottom right button does nothing but switch between civilian and military time on the fly. It is 100m water resistant, a lifesaver for those accidental deep sea diving trips you keep taking before remembering to leave your watch at home. The stopwatch counts time to the hundredth of a second; and, even when you're using that feature (or the 2 other ones), it still shows you the time down below it in smaller font. Brilliant.

The other 2 features are an alarm which I don't know how to set yet, and this other feature simply labeled "DT"...? Where is that manual?...

Some skepticism is appropriate when reading online reviews about a product's cons, but one on Amazon was spot-on, and something to consider before buying:

"The watch does not allow you keep the light on by keeping the light button depressed. Still turns off after about 1.5 seconds. Can be quite irritating when you're trying to read the watch after waking up all blurry-eyed but I'm sure it's part of keeping that 10 year battery claim."

I could see this being a problem if terrorists ever detonate an EMP and my cell phone and all potential sources of light are destroyed, and I have to fight my zombie ex-neighbor for scraps of toilet paper and duct tape during my wristwatch's micro-bursts of light, but I personally don't think it's worth deducting any stars over. If you start thinking like that, the terrorists have already won.

This wristw...--no, it is far greater than mere wristwatch--this art-watch is deserving of a full 5 out of 5 stars. Buying it will give you the gift of time.