Did I buy a fake Casio?

I recently bought an F-94W model. It's the worst Casio I ever bought. But there's a reason for that.

The above video is on my recently acquired F-94W, which at the time I write this is the absolute cheapest new Casio digital on eBay at just $6.95. It's from a seller in the Philippines who openly stated that his stock of F-94W watches has little specks of dust under the crystal. And he was right, because mine has those little specks...

...but it goes beyond that. This watch is so bad that it loses more than 5 seconds daily. This is unheard of on a Casio watch even of the cheapest variety.

To put this in perspective, I also own a Casio that cost me 4 cents more at $6.99, a Casio MQ24 (which even at $12 to $15 is still cheap and good.) That watch only loses 1 to 3 seconds per week.

I mention the MQ24 just to show that price does not dictate quartz movement quality. Even the cheapest of the cheap Casio timepieces, be they analog or digital, always keep good time.

Generally speaking, any quartz movement at worst will gain or lose 1.5 seconds daily. If more time than that is lost, the watch is junk.

So why is my F-94W such a dud?

I suspect the watch may be a fake.

The more I examined this watch, there were three things that stuck out which really made me question its authenticity, contrary to what I said in the video.

First is the aforementioned horrific quartz movement. I wasn't aware of this at the time I made the video.

Second is the CASIO logo at top of the watch. The spacing of the letters is slightly off and the letter I doesn't look correct.

Third is something I thought to be true at the time I recorded the video, the MADE IN JAPAN stamp on the back.

There is simply no way a Casio watch made in Japan would perform as bad as my F-94W does.

I won't be returning the watch because it was only 7 bucks, and the cost to ship it back would probably cost more than the purchase price.

I'm no stranger to cheap watches...

Since I started getting into watches, I've bought a few ridiculously cheap timepieces just for the fun of it. And by ridiculously cheap I mean the kind that sell for under 5 bucks. Some were so bad that I had to chuck them in the trash. However those super cheap watches were all analog.

This possibly-fake Casio I bought is the first digital where I've seen such bad timekeeping. Granted, the watch is totally functional and everything works, but to see a quartz digital lose more than 5 seconds daily is really, really bad.

What I'm certain of is that the F-94W that Amazon carries is a true Casio. But the one I have... I don't think so.

Yes, I wasted 7 bucks on this thing. But it was only 7 bucks. Live and learn.

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