Smartwatches have plenty of benefits — precise time, handy notifications, biometric stats — but for people with an affinity for the traditional watch, they aren’t a particularly compelling replacement. Battery life typically doesn’t exceed a couple days, touchscreen interfaces can be fiddly and frustrating, and no watch running Android Wear or Apple’s watchOS can match the beautiful complexity and depth of an analog watch dial. There is, however, an option that offers the best of both worlds. Casio’s Edifice sports watches combine a trusty, solar-powered quartz movement with smartphone connectivity, bringing the classic analog watch into the 21st century — a wonderful middle ground for those who love classic watches and new technology.
Casio Edifice EQB500
With the push of a button at the eight o’clock position, the EQB500 synchs with the CASIO WATCH+ app and automatically adjusts to the time on your smartphone, benefitting from the same atomic signals that keep such accurate time on your phone. The watch also boasts a dual-time feature that allows you to select the time from one of 300 cities worldwide on the app, then displays it on a sub-dial at the nine o’clock position. The EQB500 also boasts an alarm setting, email notifications and a stopwatch with lap and split time functions, accurate to 1/1000 of a second. The smartphone connectivity allows users to log up to 100 different times onto your phone, and for motorsports fans and track rats, the CASIO WATCH+ app has preset data for the world’s major raceways, which can be used in conjunction with the stopwatch to calculate average speeds.
Casio Edifice EQB600
Like the EQB500, the EQB600 quickly connects to your smartphone via the pusher at eight o’clock, proving accurate time for the home time on the main watch dial and a choice of 300 world cities to represent a secondary time zone. Going a step further, on the watch dial is a beautiful blue representation of the northern hemisphere. As the day passes, the globe rotates along with a small hand that indicates the time zone of the selected second city. For travelers entering a new time zone, a pusher at two o’clock allows the user to switch their home time from the main dial to the sub dial, and their new time zone (which updates automatically) to the main dial. It’s a smart and convenient feature, done succinctly and subtly.
