Is the "Royale" Worth It? - Casio AE-1200 Day One Review

The Casio AE-1200 is a watch I have looked at for a long time due to its design. However, I have always been hesitant to get one due to size concerns and the plastic build. 

The size concerns were eliminated by watching some videos and the build quality issue was vaporized when I found out about mod kits for this model. My SKXMOD kit has not yet arrived, so here's my day one review of this watch in its stock form. I paid 30€ for the watch.

Design

The design of this watch is what made this watch noticeable to me. I think that the sectioned approach makes the watch look really cool and, in a sense,"tactical".

Many people seem to like this due to its (in my opinion only slight) resemblance to the Seiko that was worn by Roger Moore. I only found out about this connection upon researching the watch after becoming interested in it, so that is not the case for me, but it does bring some perspective towards the popularity of this watch. 

I think the size actually works out surprisingly well for me and the design really does feel cool like I thought. This colourway, which I got since I intend on changing the case anyway, also looks much better than I thought it would from the images and videos I have seen. 

I am more than satisfied with the way that the watch looks. 

Build quality, finishing and materials

This is where the watch falls short. The whole watch is plastic, including the dial window. There aren't any major flaws with the finishing of the plastic, although the seams are left fully visible. 

The caseback is metal, which gives the watch some structure. However, it is slightly misaligned from the center, which shows that the watch is not made with precision. 

The water resistance is 100 metres, which is good for a watch with this build and price point. Casio is also very confident with its ratings, so it might be better than a typical 100m rated watch in this regard. 

The buttons also feel good. I would rate them above my GMW-B5000 and LCW-M100, both of which are much more expensive than this watch. 

At 30€, a cheap build like this can be excused, but there are watches at this price, many of which are from Casio itself, that are built using metal and glass, so build quality really isn't the selling point of this watch. 

Features

While the build is clearly not a great selling point, there are more selling points than the cool design. This comes in the form of the features within the watch. 

Officially, the watch is a part of Casio's World Time series. This comes across very clearly in this watch. The splitting of the screen is mostly done with this function in mind. The top left circular section always shows your home time. While the small section at the top right is there for the mute indicator, the section under it shows a world map and highlights the selected time zone, which is used in some of the functionality.

When you click the bottom right button on the main timekeeping mode, it switches across 4 configurable time zones. The map shows where you are at in each of these. There is also a world time mode (modes being changed by the bottom left button), which allows you to cycle across all of the time zones and the zone is once again shown on the map.

This effectively makes this a GMT watch with steroids, but it also has functions outside of the world time. 

To be precise, the watch has modes for alarms, a timer and a stopwatch. I do not know how well the alarms work as they are not a feature that I would use, but the timer and stopwatch seem to work fine, although the timer is limited to 24h from what I can tell. 

There is also a backlight.

As is visible here, the light is not entirely even, but it works well and I much prefer it to the likes of lume and tritium. 

One thing I really like about the light here is that it can be configured between 1 and 3 seconds. My LCW-M100 lacks this option, so the light on it is quite short. The 3 seconds help a lot towards making the light more useful.

Some other notes are that the watch can be configured to show either 12h or 24h time, but the date is stuck to the American format, which is stupid because it is just plainly unintuitive to me as someone who is used to the European format. 

Strap

Not much to write here. The strap is a cheap resin band. It's comfortable and it works. However, it is too long as Casio's resin straps typically are. 

Conclusion

I really like the watch. The design is really cool and there are plenty of features in the watch. The world time stuff is only useful to me to a very limited extent, but I mostly got it for the design anyway.

The build quality is nothing special, but the watch is relatively cheap and the features and design more than justify the price for me. The stainless steel mod kit should also solve the build for me.