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Toys Technology

Looking for High-Tech Watches? 82

Posted by Cliff from the dick-tracy-eat-your-heart-out dept.
M3wThr33 asks: "I currently own a Casio WQV-3, which is a digital camera watch with IR, but lately it's taken a turn for the worse. With the news of Fossil recently scrapping their latest PDA watch, I'd like to know what other kinds of high-tech gizmos I can slap on my wrist? I've recently been eyeing the Matsucom OnHandPC, but am beginning to think that it's outdated. I already have a Palm Zire71, so the watch would be more for the 'ooh' and 'ahh' factor, as opposed to actual usefulness."
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Looking for High-Tech Watches? More

Looking for High-Tech Watches?

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  • how about timex? (Score:3, Informative)

    by nocomment ( 239368 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @06:54PM (#8070860) Homepage Journal
    You want something more than the high-school dork calculator watch (I had a few of those)?

    Try the Timex GPS watch [ebay.com].

    • Re:how about timex? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nocomment ( 239368 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#8070906) Homepage Journal
      I hate to reply to myself, but there's also ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com].

    • Re:how about timex? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rob Parkhill ( 1444 )
      Phhhh! That Timex GPS watch not only comes with a huge external GPS box that you have to attach elsewhere on your body, but it won't even give you the GPS coordinates of where you are! It simply uses the GPS numbers internally to calculate how far you have run/walked/biked/whatever.

      No, the only real GPS watch is from the fine folks at Casio [casio.com].

      • I have one of the Casio GPS watches and it does rock. It's very impressive even before you explain that it's a GPS. Only problem I've found is that I need to take it off for best reception. (?!)
      • OK, I was wrong. Suunto makes a couple of GPS watches now, and they look to be quite a bit smaller than the Casio, but also about 3X the price (the Casio is easily found for $200, whereas the Suunto models go for over $600.)

        Check out the M9 [suuntowatches.com] for sailing, and the G9 [suuntowatches.com] for golf.

  • I wanted that Fossil PDA watch. I would love to synch it with my computer and have a bunch of information ready to see at a glance. (Such as, my businesss trip itinerary..)

    Oh well. I guess I'll go back to my Casio Databank Watch. At least those let me set alarms for any day within the next year.

  • hacked SPOT? (Score:3, Informative)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @06:58PM (#8070894) Journal
    The SPOT watches will have [national.com]: a 28 MHz ARM7 processor, 64KB ROM, 48KB RAM, and a 12Kb/sec radio downlink.

    You could just wait until someone hacks this to run their own code. It runs a scaled-down version of Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) [slashdot.org] environment.
    • "You could just wait until someone hacks this to run their own code."

      Why even bother hacking it? It's useful to start with. At least I think it is. I often use my cell phone oto get the latest news etc. Supposedly these watches have a similar service.
      • That's no fun ;-)

        No, actually, one of the draws of the onhand and fossil watches is that they'll execute your own code. I'm not sure if that's a draw for m3wthr33, too, but I'm sure it would lead to a neat homebrew games scene. (provided, of course, it's not too hard to get the games loaded. example: the hp28 calculator could do all sorts of cool user-programmable things, but user programs didn't take off until the hp48sx came out with a serial port)
      • Exactly! I am considering getting a watch like this myself. I plan on hacking- stuff on the machine running at home, rather than the watch. Various services- IM, stocks, news, weather etc etc will be available on a recieve-only basis. But with the ability to send IMs to your watch, I'll have my linux machine at home spitting out messages via MSN for everything- emails with a certain topic, other alerts. mmm, a lot of fun to be had!
        • " But with the ability to send IMs to your watch, I'll have my linux machine at home spitting out messages via MSN for everything- emails with a certain topic, other alerts. mmm, a lot of fun to be had!"

          Boy I've found that tempting myself. I volunteer at a couple of art forums, helping people improve their skills. Sometimes I find ICQ messages to be mildly on the urgent side. If I could, at a glance of my watch, read an incoming message, I would probably find myself orbiting my computer less at home.
    • I just got myself the Fossil Wrist Net Round SPOT Watch today, and so far I'm impressed. I will admit to being a sucker for gadgets, but the call of a watch that receives news, weather, stocks, and especially instant messages... well, I couldn't help myself :) At $180 for the watch and $60/year for the service, it's pretty affordable (but that's just my opinion). Then again, I don't really care about affordability, it was a late Christmas present :D
  • Get yourself one of the original "Game & Watch" models from the 80's. They may not be up to date, but they're major collectors' items now, so you'll definitely have the 'ooh' factor.
    • uh... but a game and watch unit doesn't go on your wrist. if you're carrying around one of those all the time to use as a clock (heh) you may as well carry around a real PDA. Like a Zire 71, which the Asker is already doing.

      I don't know about being "major" collectors items- you can buy one on eBay for $20-40. Cool toys, to be sure- especially with really good games like Fire or Cement.
    • I have a Donkey Kong Hockey G&W actually. I took a pic for SideTalking.com, but they haven't updated since then.
  • http://www.applefritter.com/sell/datagraph.html
  • Despite carrying a PDA and a mobile phone in my pocket; and a pentorch, penknife, and USB memory drive on my keyring, I wear an analogue mechanical watch. It makes me feel like I'm not quite 100% geek. Anyone else do the same?
    • Me too, except mine has 256MB of Flash ram

      <a href"http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/5eec /">here </a>
    • I carry a PDA, Wallet, keys, flashlight and bud headphones all in my pockets but I don't wear a watch.

      I stopped wearing one sometime ago and I can't get back to it.

      • I more or less stopped wearing a watch until I bought my N-Gage. When I'm wearing jeans, I'd rather not be pulling it out of my (tight) pocket all the time just to check the time, so I've started wearing my Casio GPS watch on the weekends again.
    • I started wearing an analog mechanical Timex watch over a decade ago. The whole 'digital' bit gets tiresome, and who wants to do decimal math to figure out how soon before some deadline when you can just glance at the hands on a dial and count the tickmarks?

      I wouldn't want to go back to having a watch that needed to be winded daily, though.

      I can do cool things with my cheap timex like put my gaussmeter's probe (it's a very sensitive gaussmeter) up against the watch back and measure the strength of the ma
  • How about a nice antique wind-up Hamilton. That will say way more about you as a person then some cheap tchochkie.
    • Hell with that. Get an old Westclox 'Bulls Eye' pocket watch. They used to be called 'A Dollar Watch' back when that's what they cost.

      They still put watch pockets on a lot of jeans, after all...
      • I thought that pocket was for a Zippo Lighter. Mine fits perfectly.
      • "They still put watch pockets on a lot of jeans, after all..."

        Those pockets are for guitar picks, if you want a watch pocket, get a vest (as in 3 piece suit type, not British underwear). Watch pockets on dress pants usually are separate from the other pockets and have a flap.

  • I have a Casio Data Bank 150 "Waveceptor" [casio.com] watch. Includes a calculator and stores phone numbers (the extent of my PDA needs.)

    But the reason I chose this watch is because it receives the national atomic clock radio time signal thingy and sets itself every night. So I always know exactly what time it is.

  • Omega Speedmaster. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jabberjaw ( 683624 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @07:43PM (#8071265)
    Repeat after me Omega Speedmaster [omega.ch]. You must own this watch. It is a work of art and I can almost guarentee that you will receive more comments about this watch than watch PDA/calculator/TV/telephone etc... O, you wanted a "geek" watch... well is this [omegawatches.com] geeky enough for you? That is right, the Omega Speedmaster was the first watch worm on the moon. In addition it was present during the Apollo-Soyuz rendervouz and has since been the watch of choice for the Russian space agency. I could go on, but I think this information will suffice.
    • Except, before you'd recieve more comments about this watch, you'd have to annoying and bore everyone you meet with a story about your watch. Otherwise, most folks would just see a watch, albeit a nice one.

      "Hi! Nice to meet you. Oh, just, uh, FYI- I am an intelligent, interesting and balanced human being because I have a watch model that has been worn by astronauts. Let me tell you all about it!"

      Neat watch, sure. But I try to impress folks by being an interesting and engaging person rather than by fancy
    • Friends who bought Omega's had serious problems with them. Seiko Kinetic is cheaper but needs servicing every few years to keep the generator in good order.
      The Omega's still look the part though.
    • Oooh, very nice! But I'm very fond of my Breitling Aerospace--made of titanium, it's incredibly light when compared with steel watches. And it has all the usual features: chronograph, countdown timer, alarm, multiple time zones, etc. And it looks trick as hell.
  • Link to the Timex watch has already been modded up (or posted first, I don't know which), but the Yes [yeswatch.com] Solstice [yeswatch.com] watch is the coolest one i've seen in a while.
  • Last time this was asked, [slashdot.org] I ended up with a Solstice Ace [yeswatch.com] from YesWatch. [yeswatch.com] A novel way to display time and your place in it, more elegant than the Casio Databanks I'd worn for years, and chicks dig it.

  • Casio Twincept (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Xian007 ( 527192 )
    My favorite watches were from Casio and their Twincept line. They had some technology that basically was a floating LCD over a normal analog watch (shown on big watch here [horlogesonline.nl])

    Every person I showed it to loved it.. the model I originally had had a floating map drawn in the LCD that I could make disappear, was a real eye catcher.

    Unfortunately Casio doesn't seem to think it was as cool as everyone else I know did, since they make maybe one or two watches now that use the technology. I still wear mine, but w

  • The submitter of this story mentioned having a camera watch. I just wanted to ask, what did he find himself using it for? (That question is aimed at anybody with one?) I'm not asking "What's the point", but rather, "gimme inspiration!" I have a cell phone with a built in camera, and have found it to be enormously useful. Just curious if the watch camera is useful in more ways because of it's 'always on your wrist' property?
    • I used to take lots of photos, but the quality of my black and white model wasn't up to any more than arthouse stuff.

      Did demonstrate how it could be used to cheat in exams though (hint, you can load photos ONTO it).

    • Depends on your lifestyle and location, I guess. I had the WQV-10 (color model) - well I still have it, but it's been acting up too much to bother with lately - and the main thing I found useful about it was that I didn't have to dig another camera out of my pocket or camerabag.

      If I see something while driving, for example, I can just whip off a shot (generally blurred, mis-aimed, or too dark, but in principle...) and move on. Or I can stand right in front of someone and "examine my watch" and not arouse
    • Well, it's come in handy (No pun intended, honest!) in quite a few situations. I remember one time I was leaving a family friend's business and saw my friend's truck in the auto repair business next door. I snapped a pick of the truck and showed it to him later.

      It's the unexpected moments that surprise you with the usefulness of it.

      Of course, like I said, I have a PDA with a camera now (which is about 100x better) and my Sanyo 8100 also has a camera, so I'd like to cut down on all the friggin' lenses.

      The
  • I find it interesting that Fossil is dumping the PDA watch that was supposed to use the Palm OS. Yet, in my latest issue of Maxim, there was this nice little pullout for the Fossil/MSN watch. I wonder if Microsoft had anything to do with Fossil dumping the Palm-driven PDA watch. No fair...I thought that would have been pretty cool. Monopolies...I tell ya...
  • I started a discussion about them [slashdot.org] from my submitted story [slashdot.org] yesterday. They have been around for ages and I still use one today over PDAs.

  • High Tech (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arthur Dent ( 76567 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @08:30PM (#8071679)
    You could try the catapault watch [backyardartillery.com].
    Or you could see if you can find a Hydraulic Watch [davebarry.com]
    With this watch, when you want to know what time it is, you pull a knob, which activates a hydraulic piston mechanism, which raises a little cover, thus revealing the watch face.

  • Depending on what exactly you want out of a "high-tech" watch, you may want to look at the Suunto line. Their watches combine time features with compases, altimeters, barometers, and (on some models) far far more (including GPS). http://www.suunto.com has their entire line. One nice thing about their products is that they hold up (they are fairly popular among the gadget-loving backpacking crowd) and many of their models actually look good (the Observer line in particular).

    http://www.suuntowatches.com/com
    • About a year and a half ago I bought a Casio Sea Pathfinder, which is very similar to the Suuntos. It has a thermometer, barometer and compass. The thermometer is not that useful, as you have to take it off for 30 minutes to get a reading not influenced by your heat. The barometer is ok, it has a little graph at the top of the large LCD that tracks the last 48 hours, but I work on the 18th floor so its not to keen - good for camping though. The compass works fine, when I was hiking last year I found it as u
  • your tastes might veer more towards hamilton [underview.com], otherwise try a halter barnes Time Machine [lycos.fr]. or maybe even something rare and cool like the vulcain jump hour [network54.com]. failing that, try searching for skeleton watches [redfingerprint.com].
  • The Casio Atomic Solar G-Shock [casio.com] is without a doubt the best watch I've ever owned. It doesn't have any fancy cameras or GPS devices or data storage features, but it meets my one requirement of a watch: if I get sucked into some kind of spacetime vortex and end up trapped on some prehistoric planet with two times Earth's gravity, the watch had better last me at least until I get eaten by a dinosaur.

    The Atomic Solar G-Shock automatically synchronizes itself with an atomic clock signal (thus the "atomic" par

    • It doesn't have any fancy cameras or GPS devices or data storage features, but it meets my one requirement of a watch: if I get sucked into some kind of spacetime vortex and end up trapped on some prehistoric planet with two times Earth's gravity, the watch had better last me at least until I get eaten by a dinosaur.

      I just wanted to point out that if said scenario comes to pass, you probably won't be able to synchronize with said atomic clock signal. Not to mention that the planet's "local" time might n
      • Oh, I could care less if it actually still tells accurate time. I mean, I've got dinosaurs to worry about, who cares whether it's 6:30 or half past midnight? All I want is to be able to convince the primitive native peoples that I'm a god. That and bragging rights.

  • Polar (Score:1)

    by p0ppe ( 246551 )
    Polar (http://www.polar.fi/), another finnish company besides Suunto makes some fairly interesting watches. Their speciality is heart rate monitors, but they've packed quite a lot of other functionality into their top of the range watches.
  • http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/5a1a/

  • I use this [casio.com] and as far as PDA is concerned, I use Treo 600

    Maybe that was the wish list...

  • with this watch http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/601-4595773-2 279358?asin=B00005QEME i assigned an email address to the watch and used the account to sign up for email alerts with cnn/msnbc/weather channel etc. The downside is that i get spam on my watch (what time is it or do i want to enlarge my . . .
  • My wife bought me a Citizen watch [citizenwatch.com] for my birthday last month. Happened to be the one I sent her an email about :)

    The EcoDrive Skyhawk [citizenwatch.com] has multiple time zones, analog and digital display, UTC display at all times (quite handy when going over logfiles sometimes), 24-hour hour display, split chronograph and countdown timer, plus three alarms. Also water resistant to 100 meters, and a slide-rule outer bezel (extra geek points if you can actually use it :>)

    Not only does it look sleek, but never needs wind
  • Hey, all - does anyone know of any decent digital pocketwatches? I've looked all over, but found nothing... :(
  • Haven't seen the watch in person, but it looks like a good geek-model. Their wristwatch dive computers and sports watches are better than anything else out there!

    Suunto [suunto.com]
  • Quite honestly nobody, not even your geek friends, are going to be impressed by a digital watch.
    Invest in a nice Swiss made Superlative Chronograph - Officially Certified - Rolex Submariner.

    Cost you about $2,500 used, or somewhere in the $3,800 range new.
    Doesn't use batteries, it is self winding as long as you wear it.
    Sapphire crystal. Pretty much scratch proof while you are wearing it - anything that can scratch that lens would blow off your arm in the process.
    Stainless steel one case. Waterproof down t
    • Uggg, Rolexes are so overrated!

      Get a Breitling [breitling.com].

      Made for pilots and divers, they are the pinnacle of technology, craftsmanship and style (also price unfortunately). Their Cosmonaute has an analog 24hr layout that takes some getting used to. And their Emergency model has a built in beacon if you eevr get stranded on a deserted island, but you need to be a liscensed pilot to buy one. Their Professional line has several analog/digital combos. The best watches you can buy as far as im concerned.

      I also like S

    • ..or an omega seamaster (the "bond" watch).
      it'll hurt for a month after you buy it as they're not cheap, but they'll last forever and you can hand it down to your kids. Plus everytime you look at your watch you'll get a little frisson of satisfaction which I keep telling myself means the price per look is worth it!
      For the more practical among you, good mechanical watches are also a way of ensuring that whatever happens, you've got a months' rent round your wrist in the event of an emergency...
  • I've been searching for a similar product. In fact, I ordered the Abacus Palm Watch from CDW.com

    http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?E D C= 533395

    However, it hasn't shipped. In fact, CDW is starting to wonder what happened and why they haven't received stock.

    So, short answer, yes! You can order a Palm watch now. Long answer: I have no idea when it will be available.

    Why do I want a Palm watch? I don't just want phone numbers... I want calendar, and reminders. I want data input and true synchroniz
  • have been a big casio fan, and am currently on my 8th casio watch. among my favs was the databank telememo 300. but those watches had an upper limit of only 8 alphanumeric characters - and you soon realise that it makes more sense to store names and numbers on your mobile, instead of the watch. the other fav was the touchscreen watch. forgot what the model number was... but it was a cool show-off! you know how it goes - you walk up to a person (preferably a gal), point to your watch, and go "look no buttons
  • I've been looking for a while. My minimum definition of the OTGW is:
    • Some calendar functionality. (display and alarm would be sufficient but data entry capability would be nice.)
    • Sync data with PC. Must not use secret proprietary protocol (e.g. the Timex watches)
    • Battery life of at least one year

    In addition to the minimum it needs one or more of the following:

    • Some form of wireless time sync
    • Calculator
    • Data logging
    • Ability to upload user-written software
    • USB storage
    • Audio recorder
    • Camera
    • wireless ema
  • I just got the Titanium Observer [suunto.com] for Christmas, and while it's not as geeky as you probably want (only has therm, barom, alti), it's the sharpest looking watch on the market after the super expensive Breitlings [breitling.com].
  • Depends obviously where one puts the focus on:

    The german watchmaker Junghans [junghans.de] manufactures a range of watches that have a solar cell covered face, so you don't need to care about energy. They adjust by radio, so you don't care about the 'right' time. They have a treatened glass and ceramic housing, so they are virtually indestructible.

    Sure, it has no GPS, Calculator, IR sender etc. But it's probably the best watch you can get for knowing the time. Plus, it looks good. Although probably more geared to t

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