Customer Reviews

Casio Men's WVA320J-1E Atomic Tough Solar Waveceptor Sports Watch

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The watch looks better in person than it does in the pictures. I recommend going to a brick and mortar store before committing on Amazon. The watch looks much better with an after-market nylon zulu/nato strap. Another version with a steel bracelet is offered, but I've heard that the quality on the bracelet is not great, so I recommend after-market bracelets (watch has standard 22mm lugs). The lume on the hands is very bright, unfortunately, the rest of the lume is a little dim, not sure if that is meant on purpose. Weak lume is a non-issue since the watch has a electric light that adequately illuminates the watch. The digital display can be used for a number of things, not just weekday and calendar day indication. It can also display different time zone times, power meter, stop watch, digital time, digital second indicator... etc. Its really cool to see that the digital time is exactly synchronized with the analog time. THIS IS NOT A DIVE WATCH! As far as a I can tell, the watch is not rated for diving, but it is styled after dive watches so I find that a little misleading. The bezel is unidirectional with 120 clicks. The atomic synchronization doesn't seem to work well here in Miami, reception from FT. Collins is poor to non-existent, but that is not Casio's fault. NIST has plans to build a station that will cover the east coast of the US but plans are not set in stone or near the horizon, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Bought the watch at $120 from Amazon (noticed the price went up :( Initially was told that the watch would ship in 1 month! but the actual ship time was a lot shorter in reality. I agree with another reviewer that the watch was a little confusing to setup initially and that the manual was a little confusing but eventually you will figure it out with a little patience.

Bottomline --- Watch is not perfect, it is not dive rated but is probably well suited for all other water activities. Packs plenty of high-tech features in a classic appearance. If you like the dive watch style but don't want the clunkiness of a dive watch, this is it. Casio reliability and quality is legendary.

I just purchased this watch at Sears. This is my first Atomic watch as I wanted a watch that I could travel with and have it take care of keeping accurate time and adjusting to the local time zone. The luminous dial is bright and the night light works very well.

This is not my first Casio so I was surprised to find how poorly the owners manual was written. I had to do trial and error just to figure out how to adjust the watch. Simple things such as setting the main time as well as the 2nd time zone were not clearly described in the owners manual. I found the manual referencing a model of watch different than the one I purchases yet the manual has the correct watch model number on it.

With regards to the quality of the watch I find it to be equivalent to the Citizen EcoDrive watches that I own. If the manual was better I would give the watch 5 stars.

INTRODUCTION
As revealed by the title for this review, I am a big fan of Casio watches. Always have been, given their looks, utility, quality, and price. While there are the "lower-end" lines of Casio watches (read, cheap), this is certainly not one of them. In fact, in my opinion, this is overall the best Casio watch I have ever owned or seen.

OBVIOUS ADVANTAGES
(1) Low Maintenance: With Tough Solar and Waveceptor technologies combined, this is the most low maintenance watch you can own. Once you set it up, you're pretty much done for the life of the watch. Imagine never having to change a battery or correct the time of your watch again. Now repeat. What a great feeling.

(2) Tough Solar: A bit repetitive of my first point, but the prospect of never having to change a battery makes this watch - and other Casio Tough Solar watches - tough to beat. This is my third Tough Solar watch. My other two have never had battery issues, and I have had them for over three years.

(3) Waveceptor: Atomic timekeeping is an excellent feature, assuming you can get a good signal for your watch to synchronize. Unfortunately, living on the east coast, my signal is weak.

(4) Looks: Obviously, a very subjective category. To me, the "beauty" of this watch is its timeless and straightforward design - nothing too fancy or crazy, but with some subtle styling cues that make it far beyond the ordinary. In particular, Casio's use of red lettering for certain letters/numbers, as well as the second hand. You will find some variant of this design utilized by Casio and other watch manufacturers for the last 25+ years.

(5) Utility: Stop watch, multiple time zones you can change on the fly, dual alarms, and an LCD display that shows your choice of month/date, day/date, or digital time. What else do you need in a watch?

THE HIDDEN ADVANTAGES
(1) Mineral Display: Highly scratch-resistant, and not the cheap acrylic displays that can be found on cheaper Casio watches. Making it a bit more recessed - like Casio's G-Shock line - would prevent more scratches, but also may have detracted from its appearance.

(2) Watch Hands: If you examine the watch hands carefully, you'll note the styling cues and quality that makes this watch stand out. In particular, the red-tipped second hand. These are high-quality dials.

(3) Watch Buttons: The cheaper Casio watches have plastic buttons. For the middle-range Casio watches, they may have aluminum/metal buttons, but that's it. This model has the metal buttons that are recessed within another metal ring, and are softer to the touch when depressing. Definitely higher quality and lends a more expensive feel and appearance to the watch.

(4) Watch Band: While a resin band watch, not all resin bands are made alike. Having owned both higher-quality and lower-end Casio watches, there are definitely other resin bands that are thin, hard, and cheap-feeling, resulting in earlier cracks, tears, and discoloration. This watch definitely has one of the softer, thicker, and higher quality resin bands.

MY REQUEST TO CASIO
Size: My request to Casio that they continue slimming down their high-end Tough Solar and Waveceptor watches and perhaps make some on the dressy/business side. This watch is perfect for this particular "style" of watch. However, it is a larger watch, being roughly the size of a Rolex Submariner, but perhaps not as thick. For example, I would love to see a Casio WVQ550A-1A1V (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JX7JOI/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A3APZO11P5R2Q5) with both Tough Solar and Waveceptor technologies. Better yet, make that one G-Shock durable as well.

CONCLUSION
In short, this is the Tough Solar and Waveceptor-enabled Casio watch I have been waiting for. Up until now, this technology has largely been integrated into either Casio's G-Shock or Edifice lines, or into certain cheaper Casio models I am simply now too old (and successful) to buy. I own two G-Shocks (and love them also), but they are a bit sporty looking. The Edifice line is great, but they are also more expensive and generally use metal bands, while my preference is for resin-banded watches. This watch, subject to my single con above, completely fits my needs.

BUY THIS WATCH. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.*

* Unless, of course, you simply do not like the design, have a disdain for incredibly useful multi-function watches, are a watch snob, or do not like watches that are a bit on the larger side. I would say that this watch is about the size (or slightly smaller) of a Rolex Submariner, but not as thick.

I just received this watch form Amazon.com,
When I took it out of the package, Just followed the setup directions
in the owners manual, and it was easy. I found the directions clear and easy to
follow. The watch is large but not too heavy. It is solar powered and uses the
waveceptor technology to keep accurate Time. So far I am very impressed. It was on
Sale at amazon.com for $120.00. great price. Fast delivery, great service Amazon

Pro's:
* Does everything you would want it to do.
* A few minutes of reading the manual makes the watch very functional and you can easily remember how to program it. Manual clarity ranks 3.5/10.
* Watch is not too big. I have small wrists and the watch doesn't look too big at all. It would fit ANYONE.
* The rubber band/strap is durable. It also has grooves on the band which keeps the excess band (when you adjust it) secured in the band holder (every digital watch has a band secure/holder for the excess band when you adjust it if you can picture what I'm talking about). Trust me, it's a positive.
* Watch looks great (red numbers on face and second hand pop out).
* The digital read has optional displays (day of week + day #, seconds, digital time).
* Has weight to it. I like this b/c it feels like I have something on my wrist. It feels substantial and not cheap. Not TOO heavy thought.
* Customer care/service are nice people and willing to help.

Con's:
* Orange glow/light does not light up the face enough, yet you can still read the time at night.
* Learning how to initially sync seconds and time takes a few minutes, but you can get it. I got it.

Overall, the con's are not very bad. This is a great watch, and I recommend it to everyone. It's not too big and has a great feel to it. It looks semi-expensive too :).

Side note: I called customer care asking them why it only syncs once a day, instead of the claimed 4 times per day. They said this is normal and actually good. Apparently, due to weather, signal clarity and where you keep the watch at night all effect the syncing. The woman told me 1 sync/week is even good. Also, I asked about putting a "screen protector" on the face, to prevent scratching. I was informed that this would effect the quality of sunlight entering the solar panels and was advised against it.

After shopping around and waiting for a price drop, I finally got this watch for $119 at Kohl's, using their discount coupons. It is solid, great looking, easy to read and very accurate with the atomic clock sync. I recommend you download the PDF version of the users manual from the Casio web site, the book that comes with the watch is ridiculously small. The only thing I miss from my old Timex Ironman is the count-down timer, but this watch is in a completely different class! I may swap out the plastic band for a Zulu strap, but overall I am very satisfied with the watch.

*UPDATE - one year later and I am still very happy with this watch. I have no problem with the sync, even though I wear the watch to bed most nights. Agree with others that the second hand is difficult to see under low light conditions, you have to watch the opposite (luminescent) end of the hand. I would highly recommend it to anyone (and have already). You cannot beat the quality and reliability at this price point.

Others have lauded the nice points of this watch, which I agree with. It is a very nice watch, but I'm going to focus on what I see as some negatives:

1. The backlight does not light up the LCD panel. It does a reasonably good job illuminating the hands, but the LCD is extremely hard to see with it.
2. The second hand has a quirky design. The pointer end is skinny/red and hard to see. On the hub end, there is a large round luminescent dot, easy to see. In the dark, that's all you're going to see.
3. The Hand Set Mode is assigned to the lower left button, so every time you want to access for example the alarm or stopwatch function, you have to go through it. It is very rarely used, and should be assigned to the settings button on the upper left.
4. Stopwatch goes to 99m 59.99s and restarts. Would prefer it either measure in hours once it gets past one hour, or, if Casio didn't want to do that, then make it restart after 1 hour, to make the mental math easier when it's timing a multi-hour event.
5. The black face of the watch is fairly reflective, especially the outer part, which makes it a little harder to read the dial when there's a lot of bright lights overhead.
6. The numbered outer bezel is not printed (at least on my watch) quite right. There is a slight misalignment if you look closely, for example if the arrow is aligned with 12 then the 30 mark is a shade past (about 1/2 minute) the true 30 position.
7. No indicator in display to show if an alarm is set, except when you're actually in alarm set mode.
8. The alarm is not very loud, and stops after only 10 seconds.
9. Lack of countdown timer.

Okay, that's the negatives. I could write 20 or 30 positives I'm sure, overall still like the watch and the positives much outweigh the negatives.

I've owned a bunch of atomic Casios over the years. I've given some of them to my son, and although old, they all still work fine. This is the watch I've been looking for all along, and finally found with all the features I wanted. I was afraid it would be too heavy, but with the resin band instead of the metal bracelet, it is much lighter, and not at all too heavy. Speaking of the band, I was afraid I wouldn't like it, but after 6 months, I still love the resin band, much more comfortable than metal, and lighter to boot. So comfortable, in fact, that I wear it to bed, eliminating the need for a lighted clock in the bedroom. I have found that it has ALWAYS linked to the atomic clock during the night even though I am wearing it. It has never missed a night in 6 months, and I live in GA. It actually links up more reliably on my arm than when laid near a window overnight.

I does everything I could want from a watch, and is very easy to see, both the hands and the digital display. I do wish the second hand was a brighter color, however. Even though I take no special pains to keep it exposed to light, it has always shown "Hi" on the power setting except for one brief period of "Mid".

All in all, I have never been happier with a watch, and in my 70 years I have owned a great many of them.

I live in Europe so I have mostly not much use of the time update function. However, the watch is so exact so it is really not needed. In comparison with an other atomic updated watch I have at home I have calculated that the Casio shifts less than 20 sec in a year! When I occasionally travel to the US I appreciate the easy time zone shifts and automatic time correction. The functions are not very untuitive, but one figures them out without having to carry the manual. Some reviewers say thereis not much gain from having solar charged battery as eventually the watch may have to be open anyway for service. However, I found it great to be able tio use the light button at night as much as I need, and also be able to let the kids play with it without bothering if the battery will run out. I have the version with the metal bracelet (I did not find it when attempting to write this review). I regret to have bought that version instead of the cheaper version with rubber bracelet. My metal bracelet tend to accidentaly open up with the risk of dropping the watch. The watch is great (I give it 5 stars), but the metal bracelet is poor. If you want a metal bracelet, save the money by buying the rubber bracelet version and then use the money to buy a better metal bracelet with a better lock.

I was looking for a watch like this for a lot of time. It includes high technology advances in a classic look. That makes this watch very attractive. Analogue and digital features plus 3 alarms, world time, solar battery charging and radio reception for atomic time automatic adjustment. Moreover, it has LED light! (not as brilliant as Illuminators, but just enough to see the time). I only hope that the Atomic time stations around the world increase!