Negative display digital watches are stupid

It's time to put these out to pasture.

I'll start this off by saying Casio does make light-on-dark displays that actually get it right. See G-SHOCK GBD200 and G-SHOCK DW-H5600. For those two, oh yes, they are genuinely good because both have high contrast panels that are daylight-readable.

However, everything else of the older LCD variety is just plain bad.

An example of a truly awful negative LCD is the Casio CA-53WF calculator watch. The classic CA-53 with the positive display? That's fine. But the WF negative? Again, awful. You can't read that thing. Even in photos you can see how bad it is.

It's not an issue of how good or not-good your eyesight is that's the thing going wrong with a negative LCD but rather lack of contrast. That G-SHOCK GBD200 I mentioned above does have a truly high contrast display. If all the negative display watches had the contrast of the GBD200, I'd have nothing to complain about.

But for the rest of the older style LCDs with negative display... they're just trash.

When you want proper legibility with an older style digital, go with a positive LCD and stay there, else you'll have to go with one of the newer G-SHOCK models above.

Positive LCD on a digital watch is like the equivalent of a Mondaine analog watch. The superior legibility is there so you can actually, y'know, read and tell the time.

Published 2023 Jul 27

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