This $56 Casio Watch Is A Retro Step-Monitoring Dream

After I was in highschool, all I wished was a Casio Child-G watch — partly as a result of it got here in enjoyable colours, partly as a result of all of the cool youngsters had them. After I lastly satisfied my mother to purchase me one, I used to be thrilled with it till its battery died years later. It has been greater than 20 years since then, however ever since Y2K style invaded my TikTok algorithm, I have been considering quite a bit about how my watch used to simply be a watch that watched Nice. Generally I want I might return to these days… then I keep in mind that the primary purpose I purchased a smartwatch was to trace my steps.

Then I realized concerning the Casio WS-B1000 watch, which prices solely $55.95 and syncs along with your telephone to maintain monitor of time, And tracks steps. What!?

It is attainable that as we speak’s Casio watches could be greater than the analog watches of my youth. And but it by no means occurred to me to verify. By no means thoughts that I reviewed Extra sturdy Casio Put on OS watches a couple of years in the past — it was a chunky multisport watch at a time when Put on OS had a everlasting flat tire. However after slightly digging, it seems that Casio upgraded a number of of my watches develop the health monitoring performance a bit whereas sustaining the basic Casio design.

The WS-B1000 is one such watch, although it’s very fundamental. There’s no optical coronary heart charge monitor, OLED show, fancy well being sensors, contactless funds, or LTE connectivity. What it does have is Bluetooth for connecting to your telephone, an accelerometer for monitoring steps, basic stopwatch and timer features, alarms, movement reminders, and an LCD display screen with a backlight button. In different phrases, it’s sensible sufficient to be thought of a health tracker—however simply barely.

A couple of years in the past, this function set most likely wouldn’t have appealed to me. However I’m on the level in my health journey the place I’m recovering from psychological and bodily burnout attributable to long-term overtraining. It’s a frustratingly lengthy course of, and to my shock, what’s stored me going are gadgets and apps that prioritize rest and ease over “arduous coaching.” Many fashionable smartwatches throw lively minutes, standing targets, calorie burn targets, and different targets at you — so many targets to hit every day that it may be overwhelming. So the truth that the WS-B1000 can solely monitor steps or work as a stopwatch? That is a plus.

And you already know what? The three weeks I examined the WS-B1000 have been wonderful. I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to set a easy step purpose and attempt to attain it. With this watch, I might simply look down and say, “Wow! It’s 4 p.m. and I’ve walked 2,000 steps. Time to go for a stroll.” If I wished to verify my historical past, I might go into the Casio app and see a tough log. Nothing fancy, and that’s precisely what I wanted. By way of accuracy, I used to be normally inside 500 to 1,000 steps of my Apple Watch Extremely — which is a good margin of error, contemplating they have been on completely different arms and I discuss with my palms. However if you happen to’re going for one thing like this, the general purpose is to simply transfer extra, and that’s precisely what you want.

There have been different little touches I appreciated, too. As a result of the watch doesn’t want sensors, chips, or a large smartwatch battery, it’s surprisingly straightforward to put on. It weighs simply 36 grams, and for as soon as I didn’t appear to be I had a large hockey puck on my wrist. I additionally by no means needed to fear about charging the rattling factor—it runs on a CR2016 coin cell battery that lasts about two years.

The perfect factor concerning the Casio app is that it routinely syncs the time, so you do not have to take a seat and fiddle with buttons to reset the time or set alarms. (I horrible (And on an previous watch, too; I can by no means keep in mind the best way to do it or which drawer I put the consumer handbook in.) This factor will be programmed out of your telephone.

Clearly, this isn’t a look ahead to these trying to get essentially the most out of their smartwatch. However if you happen to’re like me and need to take a break from health tech every so often, otherwise you like the last word laid-back, low-tech health expertise, this can be a nice possibility. And will I remind you that it’s solely $56?! A lot of the fundamental trackers on this line are usually health bands, whereas this can be a cute, retro-chic Casio watch.

Alas, I solely have two wrists, and as a wearables reviewer, I am going to have to switch the Casio with the following smartwatch in my testing queue. However I’ve a reasonably good feeling that between the merchandise, that is the watch I am going to attain for.