(2024-12-09) Probably the best engineer's wristwatch of today
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As more and more circumstances out there are forcing me to stay home, I asked
myself a question: "which watch out of my current collection would I really
wear all day long with the least troubles?" To be honest, any of the watches
in the collection wouldn't give me a lot of troubles (otherwise it wouldn't
stay there), but some watches are still more suitable to the current
lifestyle than the others. Of course, one doesn't need a diver's or a field
watch for the activity happening mostly indoors. And this is when I
remembered about the type of watches that I called "engineer's watch". To
me, an engineer's watch has to meet the following requirements:
1. It must be digital, 24-hour display support is required.
2. It must be suitable for continuous indoors usage: legible enough in any
room and not dependent on the sunlight for functioning. The backlight must
keep it legible even in total darkness.
3. It must be accurate enough to not worry about it within a month or even
between the DST changes. Of course, auto calendar also is a must-have.
4. It must contain at least one alarm and a stopwatch. Additional alarms and
a countdown timer are desirable but not necessary.
5. It must be as thin as possible to fit under any cuff.
6. It must be as comfortable to wear as possible, without even noticing it on
your hand until you need to look at it.
Up until this moment, I considered Casio A700WEM-7A the king of engineers'
watches based on the above criteria. I have given mine away some time ago
but still would like to return to it sometimes. However, as of now, I do
have an even more modern and functional alternative to it: Casio
ABL-100WE-1A (later referred to as just ABL-100). I do wish this one came on
a mesh bracelet too but this one is also just fine. It is a bit thicker than
the A700 (8.2mm vs 6mm) but, considering all the functionality hidden within
this case, it still is pretty slim. Besides, it still is slimmer than the
A168WA (9.6mm) everyone likes to compare it to, even slimmer than A163
(9.1mm), A164 (8.3mm), F-91W (8.5mm), and is on par with the classic
A158/A159 models that also have 8.2mm of thickness. So, also given the
design similarities, I'd rather consider ABL-100 a modern upgrade to the
593-module classic series and specifically A158/A159 above anything else. Of
course, it weighs more as well (60 grams) just because the case is a bit
larger in other dimensions and has more components packed inside, and the
bracelet is a bit wider too. But that's exactly the kind of weight I got
used to in the past several years (comparable to the lightest of G-Shocks
I've had), so it's not a problem for me in the slightest.
Regarding wearability, it's really cool that Casio continued the trend of
"sliding clasp" for their bracelets introduced in A158..A164 models. It
really helps to size the bracelet with much more precision and much less
effort than any other solution. All you really need for this is a small
screwdriver to lift the clasp clamp off. And the overall bracelet profile
still remains slim and elegant without having to remove extra links or
anything. I had read some horror stories about the stock ABL-100 bracelet
being a hair puller but haven't found any major problems like that with it.
Once some inconveniences did start appearing though, I put on a spare 18mm
steel mesh strap to the rescue, it's even Casio-branded because it was
pulled from the A700WEM indeed. And an even cooler thing is that this watch
has drilled lugs, so the strap/bracelet change is easier than ever. You just
need a round pin of the corresponding diameter, I even have one (a SIM
removal pin) as a corkscrew addon in my Victorinox Spartan.
Besides the ultraslim case and the mesh strap, another thing that I
remembered in the A700WEM was an extremely crisp and legible LCD display.
The contrast was much, much better than in any 593-based Casio. Well, I'm
glad to say that the display of ABL-100 is just as good. It is important to
me because, as I said, I'll have to use this watch under limited lighting
conditions all winter long. Another great thing about the display is the use
of screen real estate. It is common for Casio to include pretty unnecessary
graphical elements on the displays larger than the usual "module 593" style
or G-Shock square style. Here, the only graphical element is the horizontal
scale that occupies the top strip on the screen (along with the power saving
mode and Bluetooth indicators) and it is pretty functional in every mode. In
the timekeeping, stopwatch and dual time modes, this is the gauge that
increases every 3 seconds and fills within a minute, in the timer mode it
goes backwards with the same pace, in the step counting mode, it shows the
percentage of steps relative to the goal (adjusted in the settings), and the
only mode where it does nothing is the alarm menu. I really don't mind
having this strip as it is useful, unobtrusive and doesn't take a lot of
space.
Now, to the functionality. First, let's address two elephants in the room:
Bluetooth and the step tracker. To be honest, BLE connectivity was the
primary reason I paid any attention to this watch, as it presented a perfect
opportunity to extend the list of models supported by my rcvd.py ([1])
utility program. Feature-wise, the Bluetooth module in this watch turned out
to be similar to one in OCW-T200S, so I added ABL-100 into the same section.
Contrary to the previous digital models that I owned, this one has the
connection shortcut by long-pressing the Mode button, not Search. Maybe
that's because the initial pairing setup code is different and I don't know
which exactly (another Casio app disassembly might be coming, who knows).
Anyway, as of now, syncing time is the only feature I've been really using
the BLE connectivity for. Although I'm still thinking about how to turn the
"find my phone" feature into some kind of a watch-based remote control. As
for the step tracker though... In the past, I learned not to trust any step
tracker data the hard way, but in my scenario, it at least helped me
estimate the overall amount of any physical activity done throughout the
day. Nevertheless, I still consider adding it here a strange design
decision: IMO adding just BLE would be sufficient and wouldn't lead to such
a drastic battery life reduction.
Speaking of battery, the manufacturer states that the watch is going to last
for about two years on the stock CR2016 given the following conditions: auto
time correction with the official smartphone app 4 times per day, alarm once
(10 seconds) per day, backlight illumination once (1.5 seconds) per day,
step counting 12 hours per day, power saving mode off. Now, how does this
apply to me? Of course, I'm not even going to use the official smartphone
app, let alone sync with it 4 times per day: I'm going to sync the watch
with my rcvd.py once or twice per month at most. I'm probably going to only
use the alarm occasionally but use the backlight more than once per day for
sure. And yes, there is no setting to turn the step counter off completely
(only the step reminder function), so I don't have full control over this
aspect. I have also disabled the button operation tone and turned on the
power saving mode, which, according to the manual, turns off the display "if
it is left unused for approximately 150 minutes between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m."
The problem here though is that if the step tracker accelerometer registers
the movement, it automatically wakes up the display, so I'm not sure how
useful this setting will turn out to be as I almost never take the watch off
my wrist, even when going to sleep. Anyway, still much better than the Nokia
Steel watch (yes, I even had that one at some point!) where the movement and
the step counter alone ate the entire battery in just 6 months.
All the other functionality of ABL-100 is quite trivial but still a step up
from the A700: dual time (with a quick-swap with home time feature), 5
alarms, hourly time signal, a stopwatch for up to 24 hours with up to 200
split time/lap time records and a countdown timer for up to 60 minutes. I'd
say this feature set is quite sane, but again, it is a bit baffling as to
why Casio placed their bet on the sports-oriented functions in a
vintage-design watch and sacrificed the precious memory for 200 lap records
instead of, say, world timezones or text reminders. Maybe they plan on
releasing another model in the ABL series and we'll see such features there,
who knows. BTW, on the "Wrist Action" YT channel, I have seen the comparison
of this one with the GD-B500 model, and the only added feature there is
auto-backlight, so we probably have some variations of the same firmware
already (and this allows to safely add the GD-B500 support into the same
section of rcvd.py as ABL-100). As for me, I'm quite happy about even having
the most basic stopwatch and the most basic timer in there, but I can
theoretically see an engineer doing some timing-based experiments and
comparing the results in the record memory of the watch. It is also
interesting that the manufacturer claims +/- 15 sec/month maximum deviation
without the BLE sync, which is twice more accurate than the A700, A1000,
W-800H and the module 593 based models. I hope this remains the go-to
standard for digital Casios going further, even for the more budget-friendly
ones.
Another interesting thing about this watch is its test screen, which is
entered by pressing Adjust, Mode and Search at the same time. The screens
are then switched by pressing the Search button. After the three usual
segment test screens (and the "all-segment" test screen is the third for
some reason, not the first), you get a clear screen, then the "FC" screen
(mine says 01 here), then the module/firmware screen (mine says QW 141 at
the top and then 3565 at the bottom, which matches the module number and
proves that this model is indeed the first one on this board), then the ROM
version screen (mine says 01 again), then the "FIL" screen (mine says 001),
then the "AIR" screen (mine says 01), then the "DST" screen (mine says 20),
then the "DI" screen (mine says 06), then the "FV" screen (maybe internal
firmware version, mine says 17), then the "FI" screen (mine says 03), and
finally, the "FC" screen (mine says 01). I feel like there's a lot of
deciphering of all this information to do, but I haven't seen so many
test/info screens in any other digital Casio watch. And, unlike many other
models, you can use the Light button while in a test screen, it won't do
anything else.
Lastly, as for the price of all this... Well, I'm not tracking the current
prices of GA-B001 and DW-B5600 but I think this one still is the cheapest
BLE-enabled Casio to date. And it certainly is the slickest looking of all
BLE-enabled Casios (if we don't count the MRG and Oceanus series, of course)
and definitely THE slickest looking one with a step tracker if you really
need this function. And, for this price, it definitely doesn't qualify as a
cash grab, compared to e.g. A1100 (which is almost twice as expensive and
doesn't even have a 24-hour time display mode, sic!) or the fashion limited
editions of DW-5600 or GA-2100. Of course, those who could live with a
chrome-plated resin case in A158/A159/A163/A164/A168/A700 can live with it
here too: one doesn't just get a full steel (let alone titanium) build in a
vintage-styled watch. Neither does one get water resistance rating higher
than 3 bar. Nor does one get solar charging. Those, besides the stock
bracelet being not as comfortable as I thought it would be, are my only
possible complaints about this model, but they all would be valid if I chose
this as a single watch for the rest of my life. However, I already have one,
and I did a post about it. This one I do have, because I still have a choice
of more than one watch. And with the A700's mesh strap, it already seems to
be perfect for the use cases I described in the beginning of this post.
By the way, I have also updated the "Watch collection" file on my main Gopher
page (yes, the Citizen AS2050 and Casio MQ-24 were also given away). Now all
watch models are just sorted alphabetically, and I think the ABL-100
deserves the first spot in this table, on my wrist and eventually my watch
roll as the classic digital reference with some modern features mixed in.
Given all circumstances, I really doubt this file is gonna be updated yet
again anytime soon but, as I already said before, I am not planning to
expand my collection to more items and am really enjoying the items I
already have.
--- Luxferre ---
[1]:
https://git.luxferre.top/rcvd-py/files.html
