CasioMen's Vintage A178WA-1A Silver Stainless-Steel Quartz Watch with Grey Dial

If you wear a watch as jewelry, if a Rolex or equivalent impresses people you want to impress, fine, spend your money and impress those people.... But, if you just want to know what time it is, this inexpensive watch does the job for me very well. It is accurate, easy to read in daylight or dark. It has functions that I rarely use, but I really like the "dual time zone" feature. I set the "dual time" to whatever time zone I am in, but leave the "primary time" set on my "home time zone" alone. This is simply great for air travel. At a glance, I can see local or home time.I've had a lot of watches, but this basic Casio works well for me. I got this one to replace an old Casio that I had scratched and beat up over the years working on cars, carpentry, exploring, etc... That old one still works, but this one is even better because the light is better, and numbers are larger and easier to read -- something I've come to appreciate as I get older.This watch is stainless, very durable, water resistant, keeps great time.And, the thing I love about it, I don't need to worry about it. I have some nice watches. One, for instance is a very nice gold watch, a special gift for special reasons. OK, fine for a wedding, I guess, but, mostly, they stay in a drawer. This watch is certainly not expensive jewelry. It just a simple, useful tool for me. If I lose it, or break it, or whatever, I can toss it out and get another one. One less thing to worry about.It is an excellent product.

If you're looking at A178, you must've looked at A168. Both are cool, funky watches. What might have looked as a total geek or poor-man's watch in the 80s is now hipster cool (for better or worse). Kudos to Casio to continuing to produce these 80s styles, still in 2012! Don't ever stop!There's also the gold version which I personally favor (it's funkier IMO) but the silver one is half the cost. Amazon price is around $12-$14, which has got to be a bargain!! You may have also considered A168. You can't go wrong with either but here's a comparison:- A178 is a tad bigger overall so it feels more substantial. A168 sometimes feels a bit small for men, A178 feels like the perfect in-between size for both men and women.- Band is identical- A178's display and numbers are bigger- The look of A178, while retro, would match formal wear (suits) better. A168's face screams retro-80s more and with all the colorful labels (ElectroLuminescence, Illuminator), it might almost look comical with formal wear.- Has dual time, A168 does not. This is excellent if you travel a lot.- A178 has corner lit, greenish-yellow bulb light which lights up for 2 seconds on butten press; A168 has whole-screen bright blue backlight and only stays lit while you have the button pressed. The corner light is plenty bright though A168's blue backlight looks cooler IMO.- A178's stopwatch is better as it let's you count up to 10hrs (9:59:59) before flipping over to zero. A168 is fairly limited b/c it's stopwatch can count only up to 59:59 (1hr).- A168 has 3 side buttons, A178 has 4, one on each corner. This gives a more balanced look.At the end of the day, you can't go wrong with this watch. At this price, it's a no-brainer. And I have both A168 and A178 BTW. I switch them out depending on mood. If you have the funds, just get both! :) Reminder: the watch is "WR" (Water Resist) - meaning you CAN get it wet but I wouldn't go swimming with it.[Update 8/11/2013] I've recently put a nylon watch strap ("Nato" strap) on it and it looks great! Of all the retro-styled Casio watches I have, I think the silver A178 is probably the easiest to pair up with a NATO strap in terms of looks. The square face and square LCD readout gives it really nice balance. FYI - 18mm strap and spring bars. Note: there's so little space under the spring bars, you'll have to place the strap first, then put the spring bars in place and it's a tight fit. So unfortunately, you don't have the easy swapability of the straps b/c of the little clearance.

The Casio Men's A178WA-1A Illuminator Stainless Steel Watch is an excellent wrist watch for the price. It displays the time, day, month, and date. It features a stop watch and displays the time for an alternate time zone. The watch includes the option of displaying the time in either 12-hour mode or 24-hour military mode. The watch features the standard built in light for illuminating the time in the dark and comes with a ten year battery. The metal watch comes with a stainless steel wrist band.I ordered this Casio wrist watch to replace a Timex wrist watch, which had developed a problem with the battery contacts. Although Timex offered a repair service, the representative from Timex informed me that the cost of the repair could range anywhere from $10 to $30. For that price, I knew that I could easily purchase a new wrist watch. This Casio wrist watch included all of the same features (plus one extra) as my old Timex did but cost only half as much as a comparable new Timex. There were many other watches within the price range of this Casio wrist watch which included similar features; but, most of those wrist watches were made out of plastic. In the past, I had owned plastic watches which had broken; so, I had always since preferred metal watches because of their durability. I had seen other metal watches within the price range of this Casio watch; but, most of those other watches included fewer features.The Casio wrist watch arrived only eight days after it was ordered. It came in a box which included an instruction booklet. Within minutes, I was able to set the time on the watch and to put it on.This watch does have one minor shortcoming When setting the time, the display does not indicate whether the displayed hour is AM or PM. However, once the time is set, the watch can be quickly switched from 12-hour mode to 24-hour military mode to check whether the time is set in AM or PM. If the time is off by 12 hours, it can easily be reset. However, this is a minor issue; since, the time may not have to be reset again for a number of months.The Casio wrist watch does not allow the user to set the day of the week. Instead, the watch has the user set the year when setting the other calendar functions. Although the year is not normally displayed, the year setting does control the day of the week that is displayed for a particular calendar date. This means that the wrist watch automatically adjusts for leap years, which is really nice.Overall, I am very pleased with this Casio men's wrist watch. It seems to keep time accurately and appears to be very durable. I would highly recommend this particular brand and model to anyone who is looking for reasonably priced metal watch which offers a nice set of features.