Casio Watches of the 1980s

mikece

They worked then, they still work. Exactly what a watch should do. Casio nailed it!

j45

This site is a great flex in innovation over decades.

Imustaskforhelp

Wearing a Casio watch right now (gifted to me by my brother), I really love Casio ;) One watch is enough for me and that's casio for me.

aronhegedus

F91w and g-shock are top tier. Love them

anyfactor

I often tell myself that I am conscious and rational when it comes to gifts. I don't care about brands, but rather the value something offers. Yet I do have a soft spot for "Made in Japan" Casio vintage watches and Sony devices. To me, they represented the highest form of functional and consumer utility at a justified price. No fluff, no marketing that bordered on propaganda. Japanese consumer technology meant something incredibly precious to people in underdeveloped and developing nations. It wasn't just about utility. It was about social status, too, and owning a generational asset that would continue to work for decades. A Japanese consumer device meant that you had worked hard to afford a luxury, and that luxury did not derive its merit from a brand name, but rather from manufacturing ethics, quality, and the long-term, sustainable value it offered, all while being at the cutting edge of technology. A Rolex watch uses essentially the same mechanical principles that have existed for generations. Its merit today is largely in its brand, not in being at the cutting edge of technology. An iPhone, on the other hand, is largely seen as consumable. Most modern electronic devices are treated as disposable, depreciating products. But a Made in Japan Casio watch in the 1980s or 1990s was an asset. There is a beauty and a tragedy in those vintage Japanese watches. I see it when I talk to people in their 60s or 70s who struggled to raise families in developing countries on middle-class incomes. A Casio calculator for their children when they start their high school. A Sony TV for the family to gather around and watch. A Toyota as their first family car. These weren't merely consumer products. They were milestones. They represented years of hard work, sacrifice, aspiration, and the dignity of finally being able to afford something that was genuinely well made. Something that would last. Something that could be passed down. I don't want to hear about GDP, artisanal blue jeans, or deer based tourism industry when it comes to Japan. I see how an industry and an economy that once produced these things on such an extraordinary scale have been diminished. I don't want to rationalize it or dissect it. I simply find it truly beautiful what that nation once built on an industrial scale.

stkai

Archive in case the site is giving you an error: https://archive.is/XD4QB

esafak

It's hard to describe how optimistic society, and futuristic such consumer technology felt as it rapidly advanced in the 60s-80s. There used to be television shows about the technology of the future, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow's_World and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Tomorrow_(TV_series) It used to be harmless things like a watch, or a portable music playing device. After 2000 you started to worry about what technology extracted from you, and now we're getting to the stage where are worrying about what it's going to do to us intellectually, and soon, physically.

Liuser

CGW-50 showing the planetary orbits and Hailey’s comet is really cool. Out of curiosity went to check if I could buy it but they unfortunately discontinued and now secondary markets list it in the thousands.

kimmk

I like Casio watches but I'd like them more if the watch faces weren't splattered with "Water resist", "Chrono alarm", and such labels. Yes I don't need to be reminded this watch indeed is an chrono alarm, like an advertisement, every time I look at it.

jeffreportmill1

I had a Casio in 1985 that I swear fell out of a time portal. It had a large touch screen face and allowed me to enter 50 contacts (name + phone) and had calculator functionality via touch screen (no key pad). It is not shown on this Casio page and I’ve never seen a reference to it despite it being years ahead of its time.

nrjames

I had a Casio watch in the early to mid 1980s that tracked the tides based on geo coordinates you entered and would tell you the best time to go fishing. They still promote them for this purpose: https://www.casio.com/us/watches/types/activity/fishing-watc... It looked something like this: https://www.wilberforcewatches.com/products/casio-fish-en-ti... Maybe the FT-100 or the more simple W-100?

franczesko

For anyone who might be interested, Ollee Watch from Canada is a VERY interesting project to tinker with.

pelagicAustral

I understand the massive difference between these and a mechanical watch, but I just cannot see myself ever using a digital watch. Ever... not even one these new super cool Garmin ones or even an Apple watch, I almost put them all in the same bag, including these Casio legendary watches. There is something so beautiful about a mechanical watch... I am not even talking hyper expensive stuff, there's always Seiko, Citizen, Rotary and hundreds more... so its not a flex, its just an understanding of having to look at the time and not seeing a nasty digital number. Maybe its because i work looking at screens all day.

hulitu

The chinese clones were more interesting. You had 7 songs to choose from.

ataru

I was looking at the Casio calculator catalogue recently, and I noticed there are a lot of different models. They're all broadly the same, but each one has slightly different combinations of features and appearance. The watch collectors on YouTube show that there's been hundreds of different Casio watches as well. I wonder why they create so many different models. Could it be related to the work culture of the Japanese companies? Or do they just want to have a different product for every use case?

loire280

So many of the cool, revolutionary features of these watches look so hard to use and can't possibly have been used regularly by their owners (translation dictionary lookup? scientific calculator?). Reminds me of the Windows CE devices I was kind of obsessed with as a teenager that were amazing but kind of useless because of their form factor.

decoydave

I have a data bank and a pela thin watch, still great today!

insane_dreamer

g-shock is also an excellent first watch for kids/teens ; indestructible and runs forever (like the '90s Toyota or Honda Civic)

999900000999

I do love that from a 15$ Casio to a 15k one, the community loves them all. You can get a 40$ watch that has radio accurate time keeping!

gosen

I've lost my apple watches recently, and I've been using different versions of apple watches for about 7 years. I thought I won't come back to regular watches, but I've decided to try and bought a cheap classic Casio watches for ~30 bucks. After 2 months I must admit that I don't really need smart watches :D