Friday, October 28, 2011

The Casio Edifice from Walmart

The Casio Edifice line is comprised of the most advanced Casio analog watches.  It's the elite and the vanguard of Casio efforts to break into the high end wristwatch market.  I was quite surprised to find an Edifice model in my local Walmart.  It was the EF305-1AV model.  It's not an advanced, high tech, model.  But, it does have very cool looking subdials, the Edifice name, a stainless steel case, and best of all a Walmart price!

You can read my complete review below:


Casio Edifice (Model EF305-1AV) Analog Watch with Subdials

Wristwatch Review: Men's Casio Edifice (Model EF305-1AV)Analog Watch with Subdials

A Premium Casio Men's Multi-Function Watch Plucked from the Shelves of Walmart 

The Casio Edifice line of watches represents some of the top watches from Casio. This review covers an attractive watch that snuck into Walmart with the Casio Edifice label. Subdials and sophistication are high on the list of any watch enthusiast. Even those of us on tight budgets love a sophisticated watch. When I spotted a Casio Edifice watch at Walmart for less than $40, I had to snatch it up. The watch offered a black face, a sleek stainless steel case with water resistance to 100 meters; analog subdials for the date, 24-hour clock, and day of the week; a mineral crystal, and a generously-sized black resin band. This Casio watch simply offered a combination of sleek styling, solid construction, technology, and straightforward functionality. It was undoubtedly a man's watch. When I got home, I had a chance to ponder my purchase for a little longer. Like many watches, the Casio Edifice (Model EF305-1AV) has a Japanese quartz movement that was cased in a Chinese factory. The watch design seemed well balanced. While it has subdials, the watch design is not fussy. This Casio Edifice has luminous hash marks on each hour and luminous hands for the hours, minutes, and subdials. These features make the watch plainly readable for telling time in casual use or low-light conditions. Some of the features remind me of other favorites in my watch collection. For example, the plain stainless steel bezel reminds me of the Pulsar dress watch that I love for job interviews and the resin band reminds me of the band on my Caravelle by Bulova Divers-style Watch. This Casio Edifice watch is also well proportioned.



While the trend in mechanical watches tends towards large and clunky, the case of this quartz movement Casio is approximately 40 millimeters in diameter and about 8 to 10 millimeters thick. The Casio Edifice should comfortably fit beneath the cuff of a dress shirt. The buckle seems substantial enough to avoid damage and the band offers plenty of potential sizes. Compared to my Casio HD-series watch, the band and buckle are of higher quality. On this Casio Edifice, the buckle is all metal. It's rare to find a stainless steel watch with components and design of this quality within a $40 budget.


However, no bargain watch is perfect. The most serious criticism of this Casio Edifice is that the subdial numbers are very difficult to read. This makes this affordable watch a little tough to set accurately. A second serious criticism is that this watch is estimated to have a two-year battery life. Since it was ticking on the Walmart shelf, I have no idea how much quality time I'll actually get with this nice looking watch. Finally, despite the Edifice name, this watch doesn't have any of the high tech features of the rest of the Casio Edifice watch line up. Depending on which high end watch you buy, the more expensive Casio Edifice watches have more advanced technical features like solar power, 1/1000th of second analog stopwatches, "Multi Band self-adjusting atomic timekeeping," and multi-mission drives which can power five separate watch motors. Despite the Edifice name on the face, this watch is not listed in the Edifice line up on the Casio web site. Like a secret half-brother, this watch is only admitted into the family when you do a deliberate search for Model EF305-1A.

Of course, on Amazon, some of the high end Casio Edifice watches cost over six times the price of this bargain model. At less than $40, this Casio Edifice is simply one of the nicest watches that you can buy on a Walmart watch budget. If you are looking to squeeze a nice watch into a tight Christmas gift budget, this bargain watch looks nice and is only half the price of some of the higher end Casio watches at Walmart. With a sleek stainless steel case, functional subdials, and a quality band, the Casio Edifice (Model EF305-1AV) Multi-Function Men's Watch is one any man can be proud to wear.


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