Casio WS1400, a "loaded W218"

A very nice square Casio digital with extra stuff - if you're okay with the way it works.

There are two go-to simple cheap digital watches from Casio that really, really work well. The storied F-91W and the W218H. Both of those have the exact same feature set. Time, date, alarm, chronograph. The better of the two is the W218H because it has a much better amber night light and has a display that's much easier to read.

If you took a W218H, added a fancier chronograph that could record up to 60 lap times, 3 alarms all with optional date scheduling instead of just 1 daily alarm, a countdown timer with auto-repeat and dual time feature, that's the WS1400.

The WS1400's size on paper (47.2mm lug-to-lug, 44.5mm diameter, 13.4mm thick) is larger than the W218H (44.4mm lug-to-lug, 43.2mm diameter, 10.8mm thick) but wears almost exactly the same because of the way it's shaped, meaning it is small-wrist-friendly. Appearance of the watch is G-SHOCK like with its angular lines, but obviously does not have the G-SHOCK price and is very affordable.

How to set the time and date on the Casio WS1400

Here is a full video I made of the watch showing how to set everything up:

As you will see from the video, this thing is a bit of a bear to set up.

Once everything is set, you're good to go. But I'm sure there would be a few people that would totally forget how to get the watch to perform certain functions. A few examples of this are mute/unmute takes a long press of the MODE button, switching between 12-hour and 24-hour times requires a single press of START/STOP on the main timekeeping screen, and clearing a chronograph record requires a long double button press of START/STOP and LAP/RESET. Unless you regularly use these features, you'll probably forget them...

...which goes to show why so many people love the W218H's simplicity (or the W219H which is exactly like the W218H but in a more rounded case).

I can personally deal with the oddball interface of the WS1400, but if simplicity is what you're after, get the W218 instead. Or, if you want something a little more advanced than the W218 without going overboard with a larger case that stays in the affordable range, get the W735 or W736.

Published 2023 Apr 6