It never fails to amaze me some of the basic, yet amazingly well specified watches that come out of Casio and because of this I’m always on the lookout for value models and this one is exceptional.

Value Casio AE-1000W-1AVEF

This is the World Traveler AE-1000W-1AVEF and it’s about as cheap and as tough as you need and is of excellent quality.   It is also pretty well specified for a model I’ve seen costing less than £19 – which is a crazy low price for such technology.   Quartz accuracy wise it’s not high end at +/-30 secs but beats mechanical movement watches hands down.

Basically it’s one of a series of low priced models with different versions, each similar functionality and all representing great value and certainly if you like watches you really must have one or two of these in your collection.   As a holiday watch they’re just about perfect.

Water Resistant to 100m these are plastic resin cased and 46mm x 44mm(dia) x 14mm and weigh only 40 grams and have a 10 year battery life (CR2025).   Full auto calendar and displays the time in over 48 cities and 31 time zones with quick select multi 4 city display of your favorites.   Stopwatch and countdown timers, 5 alarms, 12/24hr switching, LED back light and mineral crystal glass.   Very easy to set and use with an excellent and clear positive display it probably, if we’re all honest, provides everything we actually need from a watch.   In fact I wonder sometimes why I bother to collect other models at all!

Not a lot to dislike about this model, though I would probably change the strap (I don’t like these rubber/resin “wave” straps as they hurt my wrist) for a silicon deployment – I’ve done this on others as it’s easy to change and then it’s about perfect.