Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Casio Men's Databank Digital Watch #EDB610-1


I have one of these right now and am looking to replace it. The watch band has cracked many times in the year since I bought it, and after numerous super-gluings, I am not even going to bother replacing the band. Why?

You can't use this watch. It has a calculator with no memory function, multi-timezone function that is nearly impossible to understand how to use, a scheduler that is also next to impossible to understand how to use (and looks like you can't remove an existing schedule!?), and supposedly can hold phone numbers and e-mail addresses, but I also cannot figure it out. This calculator watch has a user's manual that is disturbingly thick, and I still can't understand some of it. I gave up trying.

As for the basic calculator functions: To save space they took a row of buttons off from the usual DataBanks. The result is that for something as simple as performing calculations, you have to go through numerous counter-intuitive button presses in order to select the operator you want (pressing a side button once= "+," twice= "-," thrice= "x," and four times= "÷". And no memory function!? Does that make sense?

The alarm function is actually the scheduler, and it is strangely complicated to enter a simple alarm, and you can't delete it after it's been used. Or at least, if it is, it's buried somewhere in the user's manual which I gave up reading.

Save your money and your sanity and get a cheaper, classic DataBank.

Oh, and one last irritant:
If the body of the watch torques in some particular way, it will think that it is low on battery power, and so the timer/alarm will never sound (for saving battery life). I came to learn not to rely on using the timer function on this, because sometimes it wouldn't chime because of this problem, and I still haven't learned how to twist the body to get it to register normally again. This started shortly after I bought the thing, yet all this time later the battery still has plenty of juice, so it's just a design defect.Buy Casio Men's Databank Digital Watch #EDB610-1!