Casio Protrek PRW-1500T-1VER Solar Powered Atomic Watch with Compass

Solar powered ‘atomic’ watch with compass, altimeter, barometer, thermometer, tide/moon times. Introducing the Casio Protrek PRW-1500T-1VER.

UK price: £173.99.

Pros: Use it to hammer in nails or time how many moon cycles it takes to read the instructions.
Cons: Weighs a ton, needs three hands to open the clasp and most of the functions don’t work very well.

Verdict: Save your money, a watch can’t turn you into Bear Grylls.

Rating:

Available from: Amazon

Product Review

You could get arm ache from wearing this contraption. It’s like one of those watches you see glossy adverts featuring men with stubble doing brave, dashing, handsome things.

The idea is that it provides a whole arsenal of tools on your wrist for when you’re out in the wilds: sailing, climbing, cycling, canoing, surfing, hiking and playing at being Rambo.

But is Casio’s latest ‘sports watch’ a logistical portal of adventure or a silly over-priced boys’ toy?

Note that it’s 79g to lug around on your arm. It may help develop one set of arm muscles but after a day’s hiking up a mountain you may feel like tossing it into a ravine… even though it cost you more than your walking boots. Look at it! Blimey, this thing is as big as a fried egg. It feels like wearing a dustbin lid on your arm. If you got in a sword fight you could use it as a shield.

If the ravine had a river in you’d be okay though. It’s water resistant down to 200m and its hard glass face is scratch resistant. The battery is recharged by exposure to light (about five minutes light for one quick burst of the backlight).

The strap is miles too big so I’d need to take it to a jeweller to adjust for me. Even so it’s still darned awkward to undo the catch and take it on and off.

But it certainly combines every arm-borne gadget in one place. Firstly, it’s a digital watch receiving flawless timekeeping by radio signals from an atomic clock. This being Casio they can’t resist adding five daily alarms, 1/100 sec stopwatch and countdown timer, world time zones, automatic daylight saving adjustments and a calendar to year 2099.

Press a button and it becomes a digital compass. Okay, it’s fun but not much use because they admit in the small print that the margin of error is 11 degrees either way. It gives you a rough idea if you’re hopelessly lost - but you won’t use it to plot a trail on a map.

Press another button and it’s a digital barometer and thermometer. Sadly it only works down to minus 10. Believe it or not when you get down to minus 30 or so it’s hard to tell whether it’s cold or not, you just lose all feeling. That’s when you’d really need a thermometer but this thing wouldn’t be working.

As for the barometer I never really know what to do with them. It gives a reading. The reading sometimes changes. I doubt that a yachtsman would stake his life on it though.

Press another button to get an altimeter reading. It shows 40m here. OS maps say it’s 70m. Hmmm, I think I know which I trust.

There’s even the facility to enter the moon and tide times for your chosen location and then have them graphed out for you in future. Except, the tide thing is a bit rough and ready. The moon thing looks sweet on the face of the watch but I’m not sure what I do with the information that the moon is now in its last quarter.

So really it’s a watch for city folk who want to pretend they go on adventures. It looks good in the bar after work. No real adventurer would use this compass or altimeter. No sailor would consult this tide graph or barometer and set sail accordingly. They’d have the proper kit and sadly, Mr Casio, the real stuff doesn’t fit on your wrist.