Casio AE1200, Part 1: The Review

Ok. I’ll admit that I’m an analog snob. I like a wide variety of watches. I’ll buy quartz. I’ll even choose quartz over mechanical if it’s the right watch, but a digital? Not happening. Vintage Pulsar? Nope. Timex Ironman? Nah. I’d browse the Casio site, skimming their catalog of what must be a million G-Shocks, and think, “meh, not for me.” Even the F91W – the dime store darling of the watch world – does nothing for me. Then I stumbled upon an article about the Casio AE1200, and a light went on. It was not a bad-looking watch, not too big, and crazy cheap. A couple of weeks later, I had a small AE1200 collection, which I will review for you today.

The AE1200 series is a plastic-bodied, LCD digital, multifunction watch. Like the vast majority of Casio watches, it is made to be used hard, so even though it does not have a massive, bulletproof case like a G-Shock, it is still good for a very useful 100m water resistance and has a 10-year battery life. To be honest, the color coating on its resin case is not going to weather nicks and scratches without wearing off, but when the watch costs less than most straps, “Oh, heavens! What if I scratch it?” really need not enter your mind.

A quick Google search turned up scads of them ranging from about $17 – $35 depending on the color and seller. I settled on the AE1200HW-1CV silver model on a black resin strap from Wal-Mart for a whopping $19 and got a black AE1200WH-1A too so I could hit the minimum for free shipping. Soon after, I saw the AE1200WH-5AV bronze case and had to snap that up too. Casio makes a green case too, but even I have my limits (for now).

The silver AE1200 is nicknamed the “Casio Royale” because it resembles the Seiko G757 5020 Sports 100 worn by Roger Moore as James Bond in Octopussy – even though it isn’t that same watch, and the movie wasn’t Casino Royale. What can I say? We watch people are weird. It’s not a copy, but there are certain key elements that connect the two, most notably, the “radar” in the top left (a clock on the Casio, a stopwatch on the Seiko, and a tracking device in the movie), the beveled black bezel with its clipped corners, and the raised nacelles for the four function buttons. Taken together the Seiko and Casio bear more than a passing resemblance. We should probably be grateful that the AE1200 wasn’t nicknamed the Casiopussy.

The first thing I noticed was how light the Casio is. I think the battery may well be the heaviest part of this watch. For those of us accustomed to wearing automatics and big divers, it can be a little disconcerting, particularly since it doesn’t look small. It is nearly 42mm wide, excluding the four buttons (41.8mm to be precise), and that is pretty darn big for a square watch, but short lugs bring its overall length to just 45mm, which is a tidy fit on my 6.75″ wrist. A 12.6mm case height doesn’t hurt either. In the end, you have a compact watch that still has enough room to display a ton of information.  

When I cast a close eye on the case, I was both surprised and disappointed. I was pleased to see how the guards around the buttons are so clearly defined, but that plastic mold parting line around the mid-case is pretty awful. I also had to question the wisdom of those faux fasteners at the corners. I know the Bond Seiko had them too, but those Roger Moore movies had all kinds of stupid shit in them. You need to be reasonable about such things. None of the edges are terribly crisp, but where that might bug me on a metal watch, I didn’t think twice about them on this plastic unit. 

What really ties the Casio and the Seiko is the AE1200’s LCD display layout featuring a digital representation of an analog clock in the top left with the others stacked below and to the right. That is probably what made the G757 so attractive to the James Bond props master, as it immediately brings to mind a radar or sonar screen. It has that same quality on the Casio, reinforced by a sector dial and cockpit instrument-style frame. It certainly looks cool, although its tiny index and thin virtual hands make it difficult to read. No matter. For that, you will rely on the large digital readout below, complete with date and running seconds. The final secret agent touch is a world map that indicates the time zone, highlighting the regions in each as you scroll through. It is perhaps the AE1200’s defining feature, and the 12-year-old boy in me (who is closer to the surface than I would care to admit) delighted in playing with it. Above that is a simple two-line function display.

There is a lot of text printed on this watch – like, a crazy amount. “WORLD TIME,” it cries, “ILLUMINATOR.” Also, “5 ALARMS,” “WR100M,” and of course “10 YEAR BATTERY” because we really need to know that. This is in addition to the function labels and the brand name. It reminds me of the 1990s when car manufacturers went crazy with badging, and a name like “Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 Twin-Turbo” was just a normal thing. To be fair, digital watches have always tended to load up the labels. It wasn’t enough for an electronic multifunction watch to be a wrist computer, it also had to look like a computer and not a real one but the kind we might imagine being in a Bond villain’s lair. You can’t get around the stuff printed on the body, but there are differences in the way the various models display the dial text. I’m partial to the bright silver and pale gray on the silver and bronze cases that mute the secondary labels. They all jump out on the black version, but the red battery announcement recedes into the background.

Illumination on the AE1200 comes only with the push of a button. Weirdly, this has been the hardest thing for me to get used to. Every time I glance down to check the time in low light, I get annoyed that I can’t see the LCD screen. Of course, once you do activate it, you get a perfectly bright yellow light that stays on for 1.5 or 3 seconds, your choice. You just need a free hand to do it.

Behind the screwed and gasketed stainless steel case back lies a Casio 3299 module. I won’t get into all the functions. Suffice to say, with 48 time zones, a stopwatch, countdown times, multiple alarms, and various timekeeping display modes, there are plenty, and all are fairly easy to activate using the four chromed buttons. Setting the time and date requires more fiddling than any analog watch would need, but it is a true set-and-forget; once you have your time and function preferences set, there should be little need to mess around further, and it says right on the face, you won’t need to worry about a dead battery for a good long time.

As I mentioned above, you can buy the silver AE1200 on a metal bracelet (AE1200WHD-1A). While it does look nice, and it adds no more than a few bucks to the purchase price, I am no fan of cheap, rattling bracelets, so I passed, opting for the resin strap instead. I hate plastic straps and was prepared to throw it away without a second thought, but I have to confess, this one is remarkably well designed. The plastic itself is far less cheap feeling than I had imagined. I wouldn’t call it soft, but it does have enough give to be comfortable right out of the box. It has dive-style “waves” near the lugs that usually exist to compress as you descend, although, on this strap, I’d say it they just for show. The buckle is plastic and signed. The strap is 18mm at the lugs and buckle, but it’s flared to 24mm below the spring bar, so it fills the head right to the outer edges of the lugs. One uncommon and thoughtful feature is the series of bumps on the underside that catch the one floating keeper, creating detents that prevent it from slipping down to the buckle or off of the tail. It’s indicative of the kind of thinking Casio applied to the rest of the watch; definitely built for a budget, but with some real thought behind it. 

My AE1200 became the weekend go-to watch, and since I am working from home and no longer wearing suits, it quickly evolved into a wear-it-all-week watch. The silver was a fast favorite as the black case reminded me too much of the black plastic digitals of my youth. Bronze was a sleeper. It was a distant second to the Casio Royale silver at first, but it kept creeping onto my wrist. I think the color works better with the black bezel and strap than the silver. I don’t even mind the case text on this one.

The AE1200 watches are exceeding clever, super cheap, and all my digital-bashing aside, rather nice looking too. But there is one more thing. You can easily modify them, even going so far as to give them steel cases. As you can see in the first photo, I’ve already started down that road…

Stay tuned for Part 2!