CASIO Oceanus Men’s Solar Radio-controlled Watch OCW-S100-1AJF

I am a precision geek. From my collection of Swiss and Japanese automatics to the best of the quartz. A watch that NEVER needs batteries, NEVER needs to be recalibrated, NEVER needs adjustment for daylight saving time or leap years, NEVER needs service, NEVER more than 1-second off EVER. Tough, lightweight, beautiful with sparkling indices that wink at you in the daylight. There is no way for a camera to capture the real-life beauty. Super light, super strong titanium case and band, Grand Seiko Zaratsu polished bezel and case topped with 99.9% clear AV coated Sapphire Crystal with a Blue hue that compliments the indices and subtle logo. The titanium band is infinitely adjustable to precisely size to your wrist with a combination of half-links and 1 micro-adjust. It uses the pin-and-collar system with solid stainless-steel pins (not cotter pins) that provides the best strength and flexibility and, I believe, is the easiest to work with. The three hands point precisely at the markers from the factory and they, and the date wheel can be micro-adjusted separately if needed. Works both with and without an atomic signal. Finally, a classic dress, sport and tool watch that gives you time and NEVER takes it from you. CONS: Only available in Japan; you must buy from an importer.

Oceanus OCW-S100-1AJF is a premium luxury watch that is arguably the BEST timepiece you can buy at any price. Titanium bracelet. Titanium case. Not titanium coated steel- all titanium. Weights less than half of most steel watches.Sapphire crystal. Polished to perfection. Solar powered any light source will charge it. Never needs winding or battery replacement. Will run for 7 months (on a full charge) even if kept in the dark. Radio controlled. Means that each night between midnight and 6 am it connects to one of 6 atomic clocks throughout the world and adjusts to the exact time. It will automatically adjust to the correct date no matter which month it is— including leap years. You never have to reset the time or date. If you travel to a different time zone it will automatically adapt to the exact date and time. If you pull and turn the crown you can choose whatever time zone you wish you don’t even have to be there. This is just for starters. Watch a YouTube video for more. You will want this watch shipped from Japan and it will be worth the wait. About 9 days for me. Import fees / duty charge was $70.08 and that cost could vary and will be in addition to the Amazon price. Mine was shipped DHL and I paid the fees to them. This is separate from the Amazon price. Also— this is important— DHL does a poor job of communicating. I had to search the emails to find and pay the duty fees— they didn’t just bill me. Took me 2 days to figure this out or I would’ve received the watch sooner. Last recommendation; get one shipped from Japan. Don’t worry about the extra time or money this watch is the real deal and worth it. Casio is a luxury brand in Japan. Highly respected and this timepiece is one of the reasons.

I love Grand Seiko, and Citizen Chronomaster, but those watches are not in my budget. I never thought about Casio until reading reviews about this watch. I am glad I decided to give Casio a try, as this JDM watch is fantastic. Great design and finishing on the bracelet, watch face, and case. The comments by others about the difficulty of taking out links of the bracelet are valid ones. If you don’t have the proper tools and experience, do yourself a favor and take it to a quality jeweler that works on watches, and tell them that the watch has a bracelet with the pin and sleeve type links. The watch is easy to set up, and the second hand hits the marks on the watch face exactly. After the time synchs with the atomic clock, it is amazing to compare with the time on your cell phone, and see the minute change on your phone at the same time as the second hand on your watch hits the twelve o’clock position. It is amazing to set the time zone to Tokyo and watch tha watch hands and date change like magic. The titanium bracelet and cas are so light weight that you don’t even notice that you are wearing a watch. A great bargain on a top quality watch. The brand may not have the same status as some, but the watch itself lacks nothing compared to the others. Update: After 3 months, This watch has become my daily watch. My dozen or so other watches have been sidelined, and I am considering selling most of them. I often wear another dressier watch in the evening, but this watch is so versatile and comfortable, there is little reason to wear anything else. It has missed synchronizing only one night in 3 months, and that is when we were staying overnight in an RV, although it worked the other nights in the camper. I have picked up a few minor scratches and tiny scuffs, but the finish is much harder to scratch than stainless steel or regular titanium. For traveling, this is the only watch I bother bringing. For a one watch guy, this could be the one for you. This is a little larger diameter than I usually wear, even with a 7.5” wrist, but is is still modest in size, and with the light weight, you don’t even notice you are wearing a watch.

This is my second Oceanus and it has not disappointed. It arrived in a nice box, well-packaged, already set and running on Tokyo time. A quick pull of the crown and adjustment to my time zone and it was ready to use. These watches are solar powered with power-saving modes and an incredible power reserve, they synchronize time with a radio reference every night so they're always correct to the second, they have a G-Shock-style tough movement, perpetual date, automatic DST adjustment, robust water resistance, very nicely-finished hard-coated titanium case and bracelet, and they even automatically adjust the hands so they are always aligned perfectly. The one flaw is the integrated bracelet - it cannot be swapped out for a strap. Oh well. It is a very nicely finished bracelet so not a big deal to me. A great watch by any measure, and a great value for the cost.

There are a number of things that attracted me to this particular Oceanus watch. The 2 main reasons are that overall the watch is a smaller sized watch that fits my wrist well and the dial is uncluttered and very readable. While higher end watches in the Oceanus range may have additional features and use higher end components, I find the models with multiple dials just too busy. The S100 has a very clean dial which gives it a "Classic" look that is unlikely to date in the years to come. Like other watches in the Oceanus range, it has tech which places the watch as one of the most accurate watches that you can buy. Yes - it is a quartz watch, but with Atomic time synchronization which means the watch is accurate to the second. Mine synchs to the US Atomic signal in Colorado every night without a hitch. The additional cost you are paying over a simple $20 quartz watch is evident in the titanium case and bracelet which are beautifully finished, the double-dome Sapphire crystal, the tough G-Shock movement and the fact it is Solar powered. This watch is also built for world travel. Flying to another time-zone? Pull out the crown, move the second hand to point to the new time zone on the inner bezel and voila! The watch adjusts the hour hand to the correct zone automatically. On receipt of the watch from Japan (within 3 days of purchase), I needed to size the bracelet by removing several links. The bracelet does have half size links which make it easy to size correctly, but I do recommend buying one of the bracelet adjustment kits available on Amazon to help with this. I have had the S100 for several weeks now and it is very light-weight and comfortable on the wrist. The hands are very accurately aligned (The second and minute hands have dead on alignment). Watches in this price range often suffer from slight hand mis-alignments. Of note - the Oceanus has a self alignment system built in, that you can run to re-align the hands if for some reason the hands are jarred out of alignment. The only down-side that I can see to this watch is that it is a JDM and does not have the regular warranty you would get from a domestic model. Also the longevity and ease in which i will be able to replace the Solar power pack (when it eventually dies) is an unknown at this time. Other than these minor concerns, there are few negatives to balance against a beautifully designed watch whose form and function are outstanding. ***4 Year Update*** This watch has been in daily use for close to 4 years now. Additional impressions and takeaways: - Incredible lightness and comfort - Sapphire Crystal has held up very well. No visible scratches after 4 years use - Titanium bezel and the watchband clasp have tiny fine line scratches. But the rest of the titanium case and strap are like new with no signs of wear - World Time synch has been very consistent with maybe 1 or 2 misses of the nightly synch each month. - Trouble free over long term with brilliant accuracy Overall - This purchase was one of the best value for money buys that I have ever made. Nothing but praise for Casio in putting out this wonderful and stylish watch. A true GEM!

This watch is fantastic on every level. It is beautifully made, sits very nicely on the wrist, keeps amazing time, and stays good looking. Once you read the instructions, it is very easy to use. The titanium is not scratching, although I am not especially hard on my watches. The crystal is on scratched because it is sapphire. I never have to buy a battery because this is solar. And the time is always dead on accurate. Unlike another radio controlled Casio I have, a cheap one, this watch reliably finds the time signal. Also, it looks fantastic. You can wear this watch with casual clothes or a suit. I have two tiny quibbles. The first is that the nomenclature is bizarre. S stands for titanium, and T stands for stainless steel. I don’t know what they were thinking. And, the city codes around the outside of the dial are small, so when you change time zones, you have to get pretty close to the watch. But since I am not doing that on a regular basis, it’s not a problem. This is not, it should be noted, a world time watch or GMT. Anyway, I would give this watch six stars if I could.

This watch is terrific! I have owned it for roughly a month now and it's probably the best watch I've ever owned. I also had an Omega Seamaster, 007 Edition, Quartz model. The fancy Omega was roughly $2000 and the second hand never even hit the marks on the face. This Casio does that and even has a function to calibrate the hands so that they do hit the marks. It's the easiest watch I've had to change the time zone on. The titanium band with the carbide coating is very sharp, and the sapphire crystal is super clear. The best feature is that it's radio capable and talks to the atomic clock network at midnight each night. It is spot-on accurate, day after day after day. Super expensive watches from Omega and Rolex can't do that. The date window also updates every night. I typically hate the date window on most watches because it needs to be fixed six times a year, NOT with this watch! This watch, or other watches in the Oceanus line, is truly the way to go if you want an elegant and great-looking watch with just the right amount of technology built-in.

This is an excellent watch as jewelry goes. Band is awesome. Fits like a glove. Face is just plain beautiful. And it's a lot less pronounced than the Seiko titanium kinetic it replaced. It also syncs like clockwork every night with the radio time broadcast. And the perpetual calendar and automatic time zones are just crazy simple and unbelievably helpful. Fit and trim? That's awesome too. The second hand stops dead center on each tick and the hour and minute hands are equally well precise (things I'm very sensitive too). So why just three stars? Because it's so darn hard to tell the time. The crystal is highly reflective, so if there's any kind of light or well lit object bouncing off the surface, you have to stop and twist your wrist one way or the other to get an obstructed view of the watch face. Plus, there's some kind of secondary light blue reflection of the same objects that are offset from the primary reflection, and they add to the distraction. Without all the competing reflections the watch face is just great. So that's one star off. The other star deduction is for the date window. If you look straight at it, with sufficient light, it's fine. But the dial with the digits is recessed below the surface by enough distance that viewing angle is limited more than it should be. Plus, it's not as easy to read under some lighting situations. I think it would have been more readable with a background that matched the face and white lettering, instead of black lettering on a white background. Update 07/26/2017: 3/4 of a year later and have grown even more fond of this watch. I've gotten used to the (rather) reflective crystal, and now feel it actually adds to and enhances the "jewelry" element (which isn't necessarily one of my higher priorities, but still appreciated). So, I'm adding back the one star previously deducted for that. The date dial being recessed enough to make viewing on an angle difficult, still warrants a one-star deduction (since a rating of 4.5 isn't possible).