It may not be fair to compare Casio to other brands when it comes to wr rating, since Casio routinely over-spec their watches. A G-Shock specced for 200m can easily go double that: hydraulic pressure tests have shown it hitting 1k and it's usually the backplate that begins to collapse before water damage is even evident (to be fair, that level of performance may be specific to gshocks and not necessarily applicable to their other watches). Nonetheless when I was a kid I would go swimming with my casio watches all the time, and never had issues.
Personally it doesn't bother me, since the only time I would be doing that is primarily to change the time for daylight savings. In general I don't use the other modes, and the only other button I would use more often would be the lume - which I don't need to unscrew the crown for
Just FYI, you just need to pay attention to the release window. In the past they tried a limited number release, but instantly got hoarded by scalpers picking them all up. In order to combat this, they now offer a opening window where as long as you make a purchase during this time, you are guaranteed the purchase. Afaik you can only buy one.
Pro tip: create an account ahead of time, and make sure your credit card info is ready to go. The last time the purchase window was like a few mins, but that was a few years back when I got mine.
consumer timegrapghers are all powered by a quartz oscillator, and have the same vulnerabilities that can cause drift - namely temperature. Some hardware would have temperature compensation integrated in the circuitry, and even those have a couple ppm variance (~5s/month)
Chip scale atomic clock (csac) hardware used by terrestrial telecommunications (cell phone base stations) and big data centers are much more accurate, but the microchip itself can costs thousands - but even these could have a variance of a few ms. Higher quality cjipsets are used for things like gps even, but the cost goes up substantially.
A timegrapher app is probably just as good (or flawed depending on you point of view) as a physical timegrapher, the main difference being microphone sensitivity.
The only item I see on Amazon for that price range is a Invicta quartz diver with an oyster-style bracelet. It has a stamped clasp, and uses quick release pins instead of screws for bracelet adjustment, whereas the islander has a milled clasp and uses screws for adjustment. Given the differences aside, what is it about the islander bracelet that makes it garbage and thus inferior? Is it the bracelet style? More difficult to adjust? Not heavy enough? Too heavy?
Just genuinely curious, because I have the same islander, and I think the bracelet is fine given the price range. However if there are better bracelets for cheaper, I would be willing to check them out.
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