Customer Reviews

Casio Men's WV300DA-7AC Waveceptor Solar Atomic Silver-Tone Watch

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this watch in Akihabara in 2005 when it was not available over here. What attracted me were the large clear numbers. These days, I let it set itself to the atomic clock at NIST in Colorado over night about once a month. It starts searching about midnight and is usually synched about 5 minutes later. Nothing else has been needed. The bans fits and has held up well. The battery still shows "H" after 3 years. I presume this is because the solar cell powers it most of the time. Though I hardly ever use the light. The crystal is hardy, as well. Couple of scratches around the edges. I do take it off before heavy work in the yard, but that's about it. One problem I had was the instructions were in Kanji! My Kanji is not so good. Better hold on to the instructions because there are a lot of functions and not many buttons. The dual time zone feature is very helpful when flying. No GPS, compass, or 1,000-name memory. It is just a solid time piece.

I compared both the WV300DA-7B with the WV300DA-7A, the only difference being the negative display versus the positive display (negative is the 7B, and positive is the 7A). I eventually decided on the 7A, since the display was easier to see, and the light was more effective in the dark. This review is based on the 7A watch.

I was interested in finding a watch for my dad that was solar powered and had 24 hour time, since he needed 24 hour time for work. This meant that it had to be a digital watch, and Casio is pretty much the only company that has digital solar watches. Most of Casio's G-Shock and Wave Ceptor watches look pretty ugly and bulky but this one is definitely an exception. It has a slim profile with a rectangular case.

Contrary to what one of the reviewers said, I thought it as pretty easy to setup. I didn't need the manual to figure out how to change the city, or the DST setting, or the time. The back of the watch has engravings to state what each button does but you can figure it out by trying them. I used a thumb tack to remove the links to resize the band to fit my small wrists. You just have to force the holes opposite the arrow direction to unlock the links and perform the reverse to lock them. It took a little bit of effort to remove one, but once you get one unlocked, the rest are easier since you know much effort it takes.

It uses a Panasonic CTL1616 Cobalt Titanium Lithium battery for the storage, whatever that means. If it dies, just replace the battery. I'm not sure how long the rechargeable battery lasts but it should last a while.

I am quite pleased with most aspects of this watch. It keeps perfect time. It has a solar battery. The countdown timer is very useful for taking short naps, or timing things in the oven or on the barbeque.

An improvement would be to be able to see the date and day at the same time. Presently, you have to push a button to alternate between day and date. Making it more waterproof would also be welcomed.

All things considered, this is the best waveceptor solar watch so far.

High end, stainless steel, digital watch with large, easy-to-read, black letters on white background. Casio design has reduced thickness of the atomic watch so that it now fits under the shirt cuff.

I wear the watch to bed at night and it receives the radio time signal while I sleep. The extensive instructions about watch placement to receive WWV radio signals have not been needed for my Ohio location.

Sizing of the watch band required the services of a watch repairman - but he did it no charge.

Many easy-to-use features.

Overall I'm very pleased with this watch, and would recommend it. However, three cautionary notes:

1. As of this writing (3/27/2010) the Amazon listing shows "Water Resistance Depth = 330 feet". The watch itself is simply imprinted "water resistant", and Casio's website also simply lists it as "water resistant". This makes it a category II watch (non-water resistant is cat I, 50 meters is cat III, 100 meters is cat IV, 200-300 meters is cat V), suitable for splashes, rain, but not swimming.

2. The band: I have smaller wrists, and the links of the band are fairly limited in their hinge movement. When sized down the band does not contour nicely to a smaller wrist size. It has a 15 mm lug size, so replacement band options are somewhat limited.

3. The stopwatch and countdown timer both have a one hour limit.

Now, aside from these issues, the watch is otherwise terrific. The display is extremely readable, and the watch is both functional and stylish. By the way, the module number for this watch is 3023, go to the Casio website and look this up as a PDF file. It is much easier to read on-screen than in the tiny, tightly folded booklet that comes with the watch.

May 27th addendum: I ended up replacing the original band with a Casio-brand 14 mm black plastic strap. The 16 looked a little too big. The 14 works great, is very comfortable, and looks surprisingly good with the watch.

UPDATED August 14th, 2009

I have owned two of these watches (I didn't like the reverse background watch, but this one is better), and the band is solid. The band has never given me any issues and I wear it as my primary watch all the time. The silver does not come off the watch (someone mentioned theirs did). I wear mine in a work environment, I fix servers/computers and perform maintenance on hardware daily. This watch does fine and gives no issues.

I bought this watch in 2007, I'm writing this review in 2009. I love this watch! I still wear it! The watch picks up the time very routinely (at minimum 6 times per week on an average) from one of the atomic clock radio signals. The display is great - I owned the other version with the inverse display, and that one was hateful for reading.

The time synchronization works great for me, and the watch is highly reliable. I typically don't bother looking at other watches at malls etc, because nothing can compete with this watch for me.

I was able to resize my watch bracelet with my swiss army pocket knife (the leather punch tool). with no real hassle.

THIS display is GREAT for legibility/reading the time. I'm very pleased with this watch, I work in an environment where it's needed to have a good time reference, and mine is very accurate with the time synchronization! I'd highly recommend this watch to others. While it is not as stylish as some of the fancier sports watches, it has what I want:

1) ACCURACY, synchronizes reliably with Atomic Clock Standard.

2) no need for a battery, reliable power supply even though I am mostly indoors -- this impresses me that it can sustain a charge with indoor light only.

3) Rugged enough to endure being on my arm in a working environment,

4) Water resistant for my needs: I can wear it in the shower, do dishes with it, etc as well.

5) VERY legible display.

I find the other features of this watch useful, the alternate time zone, the stopwatch and alarms as well.

One more thing that's very impressive, I work indoors mostly, and am mostly indoors. I (sadly) am not in the sun or daylight often, yet this watch always has ample power in it's reserve and has NEVER had a dilemma with power. When i bought the watch initially, I recognized this and would place the watch outside in the sun (hoping squirrels, crows or other creatures wouldn't take it), yet THIS WAS UNNECESSARY!

This watch obtains all the power it needs from the indoor light I am in most of the time! I have long given up setting my watch outside - it really is not needed.

This is the very long way to say that this watch's ability to keep a reliable charge is truly impressive. I highly recommend this watch, even though it does not have the high-style of other fancy sports watches, this watch seriously makes up for this in it's reliability, accuracy and solid function.

I received this watch for Christmas from my wife. I had been looking for a Solar Atomic watch for some time and never considered this one, but was waiting until after Christmas just in case, even with the before Christmas sales. Now after ten days of use, I am well pleased at her choice. I owned a cheap solar atomic watch about 10 years ago that I wore for about 5 years and then the strap broke. It was not replaceable. So I went to a regular watch with a cloth type strap. This Casio is easy to read with its large numbers, even without my glasses on. The band was way too big, but after looking it over carefully, it was easy to take out the 4 links I had to remove; the hard part was finding something to fit in the little hole in each link, but a nail works well. Instructions for link removal should have been in the instructions. The manual is available and very readable at the Casio web site and only five pages long. The watch had the correct Eastern time when I opened the package and it took mere moments to figure out how to change it to Mountain time where I live. This watch has synchronized the time at 12:03 every morning (once at 12:08). I have an atomic wall clock in my living room and the two of them are at exactly the same time every day to the second. At first I thought the Casio watch face was a little big, but I have grown attached to it and really like it a lot for readability. I also like the metal band much better than the cloth band on my previous watch. The last atomic watch I owned was plastic all over, to include the band. When I put the Casio on, I hardly noticed it was on my wrist. Very comfortable, and no scratches yet anywhere, and I am very rough with watches. I would highly recommend this watch to someone who does not need a lot of bells and whistles. I doubt that I will use the stopwatch function, but who knows. I might use the alarm and maybe the timer, but time will tell. I will update this review if necessary in the future, but so far, this is an excellent watch for the price.

I was looking for a reliable replacement for the cheap battery-powered "atomic" watches I'd been buying before, and was attracted by the slim, square look, but most importantly the readable digital time display. I hate searching for my "geezer glasses" to check the time on my wrist, but this display is always readable for me. And the solar feature, meaning I'll not have to replace another watch battery, makes it almost ideal for me.

It took a day or so for the Waveceptor to sync up to the atomic clock (which I found ironic since I live very close to Ft. Collins where they claim the transmitter is), but it has worked perfectly since it figured out where in the world I am. And this may have also been caused by a dwindling charge in the battery from having been in a dark box so long. Once I set it in the sun for a good preliminary charge, it has been working fine.

I haven't tried out any of the features other than the display light (works great!), but I'm happy to report no unexpected alarms going off in the middle of the night as I experienced with my previous cheapos. Low-to-no maintenence reliability is what I was looking for, and this watch is no disappointment so far.

Adjusting the band length was a little daunting at first. The bands on the other watches I've owned had pins to remove, but this one has a hole on the back of each link giving you access to a sliding latch, and you move the latch with a tool (I ended up using an icepick-like scoring tool) in the direction of the arrow stamped onto the link to release the link. Moving this latch was difficult, which is probably a good thing because you don't want it releasing its hold on the other link when you least expect it, but it would have been nice to have documentation that includes suggestions for how to do this properly. Once I figured it out, I was able to remove the necessary links and fit the watch to my wrist comfortably.

All in all I'm very satisfied with this watch and look forward to many maintenance-free years with it (fingers crossed). Now if I can just figure out what to do with my drawerful of dead cheapo watches...

My wife bought me this watch(my choice) for my birthday 2 years ago and I'm extremely happy with it. I like low maintenance gadgets, and how much less could you have if you never need to wind, change a battery or set it? It sychronizes even when we're in Baja California, Mexico. It has a great appearance and readability, and a light to tell how much longer you have to suffer through a night time boring event. It's tough too, as I'm always hitting my watch against doorframes by accident. Go for it.

I purchased the earlier WV300DA-7A which was then advertised as having a "Stainless Steel Case", I printed and kept a copy of the web page. Imagine my surprise when it fell apart 8 months later revealing that it was metal-filled plastic with a stainless-steel appliqe! Amazon declined to stand behind their advertising and Casio offered to replace it with an identical unit for only $50.00. I am now out a watch and the $100.00 that I paid. In fairness, it did perform well before falling apart.