Today we find ourselves in Paris. A city known for some of the world’s most expensive real estate. And we are talking about one of the world’s least expensive watches: The CASIO A-168WA, while that name may not sound familiar, I’m sure you have seen this watch before.
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The a168 can be found very easily around the world and of course also online. No waiting lists. The price? The equivalent of a beer with a view on the tower here behind me. Let’s dive right into the atelier to see whether this is a watch worth adding to the collection, or best left ignored.
While in this particular case we’re looking at the standard steel color version, keep in mind this particular watch can be found in a variety of finishes and even on oyster style bracelets. The A-168WA is very closely related to the truly iconic CASIO F-91W. The F-91W is one of their best selling watches and a watch many of us have likely seen or worn when growing up. The A-168WA is the slightly more upscale version of , the F-91W tucked in a nice metal jacket.
The bracelet is in stainless steel, and the case itself is essentially plastic. The bracelet is very comfortable and can be very easily resized on the go, the watch will fit pretty much any wrist size as a result.
As the bracelet is steel the bracelet has held up very well after a lot of wear and tear. Surprisingly, the plastic case, with its low profile, has held up great as well showing little to no signs of wear. Small point of attention: the watch is resistant to minor splashing. According to CASIO, Any greater water contact should be entirely avoided.
This particular casio is of course a quartz watch. Very few quartz watches put a smile on my face, this one certainly does. The watch has the essential basic functions you would expect:
Backlight, Stopwatch function, 1 hour, Daily alarm, Automatic calendar with Date, Day and Month. It is not a perpetual calendarPerpetual Calendar A perpetual calendar is a complication in a mechanical watch that automatically adjusts for the different lengths of the months, including February, and leap years, and (almost) never requires manual adjustments. It has a mechanism that takes into account the different number of days in each month, including leap years, and automatically adjusts the date, day, month and year accordingly [Learn More] so you will have to set it every so often. It also features of course the 12/24-hour timekeeping. This is basically all you need in a wristwatch.
This is a very retro, very fun and inexpensive watch, without actually being a disposable watch. Many watches in this price category are exactly that, disposable, even more expensive fashion style watches can fall in that category, this instead is the opposite of a disposable watch.
Affordable yes, disposable no. The great positive here is however, that should anything happen to destroy your watch, you can very easily replace it at minimal cost.