Watch Wearing Wednesday: The Casio Men's Analog Outdoor Watch (MRW-210HB-5BVCF)

 It's Wednesday, which watch are you wearing?  This is a watch I recently wore for a casual night out to a sports bar.  It's the Casio Men's Outdoor Watch with Velcro Band (Model MRW-210HB-5BVCF).  

Casio MRW-210HB

 I like this watch for its lightweight, comfort, and general wear everywhere bang-about-ability.  (That's not even a word.)  It's pretty much the kind of watch you can wear anywhere and everywhere.  It looks rugged and it's an easy to read watch.  There's really not much to dislike about it.  If you don't need the complexity of subdials, it might be a great alternative to the Casio Men's Heavy Duty Chronograph Quartz Watch (MCW-100H).

It would have been nice if Casio would have given this watch an adventurous name.  Adventurer, Explorer, Climber, Hiker, or Summit would have sufficed. But, I'm not a marketing professional. I guess nothing really says "Adventure" more than Casio MRW-210HB. 

If you'd like to find this watch on simple, but great, sports watch on Amazon, you can simply bang it here.  I also have other variants of this watch.  Back in 2017, I reviewed a Casio MCW-210H with a white face.  You can read that review here.

How Department Stores Can Fix their Watch Departments

It seems like department store watch departments are getting to be more and more disappointing.  As a watch collector, it's hard to go to stores like Kohl's or Belk and find any interesting watches lately.  The stores reduce the sizes of their watch departments and make me wonder:  

"Do you even know me at all?"

A Hawker Hurricane Watch from AVI-8

If you want repeat customers in a watch department, you need to have interesting and current watches. It's not enough just to have respectable looking watches that gleam under the lights. Provide an interesting browsing experience with watches that are truly unique and that really appeal to customers.  

Tap into popular culture.  People literally announce their "tribe" with their apparel, tattoos and accessories all the time.  Watches are one way to do that.  

• Where are all those Marvel Comic book watches?  
• Where's that Darth Vader watch? 
• Where are all those aviation inspired watches?  
• Where's that James Bond watch?  
• Where are those NATO watch straps so I can customize my watch? 
• Where's that interesting watch you advertised online?  
• Where are the Apple, Samsung, and other brands of Smartwatch?

The old paradigm of "what should be buy dad?-Let's get him a watch!" needs to be retired.  How about offering watches that are interesting enough to bring Dad into the store?  Having someone on hand who is enthusiastic about watches would also help.  Establish a pipeline from your stores to the cool watches. 

If a customer is impressed by the Captain America watch, but really wants a Thor watch, be able to special order something and get it in for the customer faster and less expensively. Get a line on exclusive watches that can only be found in your store.

There are lots of high end watches that are just out of reach for typical middle class.  Obviously, we won't see a Rolex at Kohl's any time soon, but can you offer a European watch brand with a little cachet?

Finally, when I can be kept busy browsing something that interests me in a department store, my wife can shop for longer and have more fun. If you can't offer interesting watches, at least offer me a couch and wifi.

Watch Review: Perry Ellis Deep Diver Men's Sport Watch

A few months ago, I jumped on an incredible watch deal at InvictaStores.com. They were clearing out a batch of Perry Ellis Deep Diver Men's Watches an amazingly low price. While it looks like these watches didn't stay in the Invicta inventory long, it's still worth taking a look at them for all the little things that are right with them. The watches are widely available at more normal prices on Amazon and eBay.

Watch Features and Construction

The attractiveness of the Perry Ellis Deep Diver lies in its simple lines, light weight, and pretty face. But, a longer look reveals that the Perry Ellis Deep Diver offers all of that in a package with some great specifications. With stainless steel construction and 200 meters of water resistance, this watch is the real deal for swimming, snorkeling, and, perhaps, some scuba diving. It has a screw down crown and a unidirectional rotating bezel with countdown markings for 20 minutes.  The strap is made from silicone and is generously sized.

Watch Dimensions

One of the things I like about this watch is that it is big in the face where it counts and small in case thickness. The case diameter for the Perry Ellis Deep Diver is about 45 millimeters. The thickness is about 9 millimeters.  The strap diameter is 20 millimeters for most of the way around and bumps just slightly wider at the watch case.

Overall Impression

I really liked the looks of this sports watch and loved that it had serious water resistance and a screw-down crown.  I also found this watch comfortable to wear for extended periods of time.  With a generously long strap, the watch fit my wrist very well.  Overall, I liked this watch a lot.  I'd consider it a good value at around $80 to $120.  While this watch is rapidly disappearing from the marketplace, you'll find many other great Perry Ellis watches here on Amazon.

Requiem for a Cheap Watch: The End of My Structure Diver-Style Watch

I was going through some of my old watches and came upon a Structure Diver-style Quartz watch that I reviewed way back in 2015.  It was a fashionable watch at one time, but it looks much sadder today. The black resin strap oxidized over the years.  It developed a white residue on some parts and the strap became brittle and broke into pieces. Apparently, rubber degrades over time and returns to a non-vulcanized state. (Sounds logical . . .)  The only thing you can do is wipe the watch strap down periodically with isopropyl alcohol.  It will clean the watch up, but it won't stop the decay.

The Remnants of a Structure Diver Style Watch.

In truth, it's a watch that I never wore much.  Although I liked it when I first bought it, the watch was clunky and a bit on the heavy side.  However, it was rapidly eclipsed by more comfortable watches from other brands. Tonight, it went out to the trash.

Changes at The Watch Dude Blog

Sigh. Words cannot express how deeply I appreciate Amazon changing up their allowed formats for affiliate advertisements:  Not! Where we could once get a quick link with a picture and description of an item from Amazon, now we must get links from their sitestripe tool. That means many of the advertising links from Amazon on this blog are simply not working. It's frustrating.

A Casio Watch Manual

Of course, one good thing from this frustration is that I get to go through the 450+ posts on this blog and update them. It's a painstaking process, but it is also a chance to revisit some of my early articles and provide updates. In some cases, it's merely a matter of increasing the font size and providing some more relevant and up-to-date advertising links. In other cases, I can add some more content and provide updates to reviews.

I've only recently begun posting new articles again and I've started accumulating some new watches at well. It's fun to revive a hobby and get back into it. It reminds me of all the cool watches I have in my collection. Of course, I do wish it would remind me of all the places where I have watches stashed. But, we'll rediscover them together.

I've started updating posts from 2011. I can't believe this watch blog has been burbling along for 13 years! More amazingly, we've gotten over 955,000 visits over the years. That's incredible. I hope you've found my posts interesting and engaging and I hope my reviews have been helpful. I really appreciate all of your visits.

So far, I've noticed that on some of my early posts, I used this blog to refer visitors to full reviews that I had written of Yahoo's Associated Content site.  While the site is long gone, Yahoo was kind enough to let us keep our articles.  I thought I had posted most of them in full here, but apparently, I missed a few.  Fortunately, I've been able to start correcting that issue.

Timex Mercury Watch

For example, the upcoming link sends you to an updated blog post here with a short review of a vintage Timex Mercury Manual Wind Watch.  It was New-In-Box from old store stock and it works well.

If you pardon my dust, I'll keep plugging away at new updates and improvements so this blog remains an enjoyable place to discover watches.

This blog will continue to participate in Amazon Affiliate and Google Ads.  They don't bring in much, but it's enough for a new watch every now and then. 😉