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Before there were smartwatches, there were watches that did all kinds of nifty things, including Casio’s 1980s-era plethora of fitness-tracking, organizing and calculating watches.
In fact, our partners over at the Verge have the lowdown on a current exhibition of Casio watches at the former mansion of late company co-founder Toshio Kashio. What’s that, you say? This one had an antenna that detected when your phone was ringing and made your watch vibrate? Natch.
As it turns out, I just purchased a Casio CA53W calculator watch as a birthday gift for a friend last week (he’s a watch guy, I can’t afford Tudor and IWC and such, enter the kitsch watch). It wasn’t hard to find one: A search on Amazon for “Casio calculator watch” brings up dozens of results, many of which fall into the $15 to $20 price range.
The surprising part wasn’t the wide availability of these watches, but rather that sprinkled throughout the mostly positive reviews were actual comparisons to the Apple Watch.
Okay, maybe these aren’t quite as crazytown as Banana Slicer reviews, or as entertaining as a gallon of milk, but still, they’re enough to make Jony Ive shudder just a little bit.
“My husband wants an Apple Watch. I think they are stupid and expensive,” wrote Amazon reviewer SA White. “I told him an Apple Watch is the same as this watch. Surprisingly he liked it. And he wears it. It works really well.”
“Better than Apple Watch!” wrote reviewer yongjoo, alongside his five-star rating. “This watch has 4 killer apps: Time, Alarm, Stopwatch and Calculator.”
“Cooler than an Apple Watch,” a reviewer named Rob insisted. “Someone actually asked me if it was an Apple Watch. I said, ‘No, it’s a classic, ’80s-era calculator watch.’ They said, ‘That’s even cooler!’ Yeah, it is.”
(Also, “Chix dig it!!” quoth an Amazon reviewer named French Toast Mafia. He writes that he always orders two at a time — so he can bestow this ultimate nerd-cool gift upon whomever he is seeing at the moment.)
Among the biggest complaints about this particular Casio is that its display isn’t backlit — bad news for all those accountants doing taxes in the dark. Also, it’s water-resistant, not fully waterproof, so forget long division in the shower.
But with a coin battery that lasts up to two years for some wearers and its “Made in the USA” claim — can you beat it? Apparently, you cannot.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
