Casio WS210H is possibly the best cheap solar digital watch

I talked about this recently, and decided to go ahead and buy one. This was a good decision.

Solar powered watches have come a long way. Back when I was a little kid in the early 1980s, I did in fact have a Casio solar watch. I don't remember the exact model but it was probably a Casio W-15 or W-27. You could easily see the solar part, and if I remember correctly it worked just like a solar calculator from that era where holding your finger over the solar cells caused the display to dim.

Modern solar powered watches are far superior compared to ones made in the '80s, and the Casio WS210H is one such example.

At the top of the display are the words TOUGH SOLAR. True on both counts.

The WS210H for all intents and purposes is G-SHOCK tough, although it is not a G-SHOCK model. The watch was built to handle its intended purpose as a tide and moon phase timepiece. This means if you wanted to take it out for boating or fishing duties, it can handle that easily. But even if you don't sail or fish at all, this is still worth getting just for the solar feature.

Imagine an AE1200 model that was built tougher, solar powered and had tide graph and moon phase function. That's what the WS210H is. Full time + date + weekday on the face with tide/moon info, 5 alarms, countdown timer, stopwatch and world time feature.

Now some notes on solar and why it matters.

Published 2020 Aug 10