To honor 50 years of being in the watch business, Casio has revealed the most adorable gadget we have seen in a while: the CRW-001-1JR ring watch (first spotted by The Verge). It’s scheduled for a December 2024 release and priced at ¥19,800 ($128 in USD). Unfortunately, this cute little timepiece seems to be only available in Japan.
Casio’s 50th-anniversary ring watch features a fully stainless steel design with glass bonding technology that the company says helps with “ensuring airtightness.” It’s also waterproof, which is almost necessary on a watch you wear as a ring. Apart from possible exclusivity for Japan, the other caveat on this ring watch is that it’s only available in a size 22. The company is offering size adjustment spacers for fingers smaller than that, but those are also only for sizes between 19 and 16.
A small button battery powers the ring watch, and its seven-segment LCD reads the hours, minutes, seconds, and the date. The watch also offers a stopwatch, an alarm, and the ability to show the time in two cities. An LED backlight illuminates the display, though the company admits the light isn’t too obvious in bright conditions. The ring watch interface offers three buttons for navigating the watch functions. I imagine you can set an alarm using those. A faint light will flash when your alarm goes off.
I appreciate Casio not going overboard with this watch’s functionality. Seeing AI and “smart” features stuffed onto every piece of tech coming out lately, I love the simplicity of this ring watch. It appropriately extends its purpose as a watch just enough by offering a stopwatch and alarm capabilities, but it doesn’t overdo it. We’ve seen Casio make that mistake with its WearOS-integrated Pro Trek WSD-F21HRRD watch, which we weren’t fans of.
Casio took a similar approach on its NASA-themed G-Shock, which it announced three years ago. The G-Shock DW5600 was an even simpler version that just told the time. It was launched to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch and featured the ship’s identification code on the band, along with a bunch of other interesting Easter Eggs.
The Japanese watch brand is big on anniversaries. Just last year, we saw the release of the Casio GW5000U-1, a tougher, more advanced version of the original DW-5000C G-Shock, with a few upgrades. This release marked the 40th anniversary of one of its most successful watch brands: the G-Shock.
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