Regrets, I've had a few....
but then again, too many to mention.....
And one of them is purchasing this watch. My take after we aring this for 48 hours.
Pro's :
Indiglo.
The strap. Decent resin strap, thick and feels like it would not deteriorate with heavy use.
Cons:
Case Build quality. The resin case looks awful in reality, and cheap. The buttons look cheap and not as large as the watch it's trying to emulate. It's height profile is also too thick, you can see they've added and extra layer for printing (my guess is a bid at some sort of differentiation) but it makes it too clunky.
The LCD. It appears I've been unlucky and got a unit with a dead patch on the lcd (see pictures). It affects the 2nd digit of the second counter and also spreads down to the right side of the date window. Even without the fault, there is ghosting on the lcd when you move viewing angles and it's not as crisp as it should be.
Graphics. The choice of font and kerning is odd. But that's what drew me via the pictures, however in reality it just doesn't look right.
Ana/digi seconds counter. Again odd choice on it's progression motion. Instead of each segment progressing in logical increments, they have clumped 2 segments together and they flash 5 times before going solid then the next 2 segments flash. It's not very aesthetically pleasing . The strange thing is when you switch between modes the wheel does a quick cool graphics rotation they could easily have slowed down and used as the progression motín for the seconds advancement, but alas no.
Dot matrix day display. Again the promotional pictures make the dots look very dark and legible.It's not. They are very light and difficult to see even in good light. This display also tells you what mode you're in too, so it would have been good to make it a lot more legible .
World map. The section you select on your world map as your home constantly flashes even in regular timekeeping mode. I guess they wanted to differentiate from the ae1200 where the non selected regions are greyed out, but again it is not very aesthetically pleasing and looks like you are constantly in a setting mode. The flashing also syncs with the ana/Digi flash which is also a little annoying. Too many things flashing in its normal state. Also the whole map disappears when you enter timer/stopwatch mode when makes the whole watch face look bare. Lots of blank real estate when operating in those modes, makes it feel even cheaper.
The strap. I did mention it as a pro. It's more heavy duty than the ae1200 and will last longer. But it's uncomfortable, and my wrist didn't get accustomed to it. It was a relief to take it off. Such a shame as my Ironman and Expedition straps are more comfortable than my casios. Initially I swapped it onto my ae1200 to see what it would look like but it's too chunky and didn't fit with it's profile look so I swapped it back.
Price. Timex always price themselves above thier station in my opinion and this is no exception. I'm UK based and got this for £50 from timex UK. Overpriced for what it is but curiosity got the better of me. I have purchased much better no name brand Chinese knock off royale homages from AliExpress for way less than what Timex is offering here. Right now on Amazon UK this timex is going for £90 and it's steel version £143?! Complete and utter joke.
Summary:
I'm not sure what I was expecting really and perhaps I was naive to think that timex could rival the iconic royale with its own take, but they and I got it so wrong. When you closely compare the form, build quality and LCD quality between the two it's night and day, and the royale is cheaper. This watch isn't one you will be constantly admiring when it's on your arm. Even with the faulty LCD, it feels like a cheap knock-off, and there are better cheap knock offs which is saying something. It's like timex thought this watch was not to be an Expedition or Ironman or Weekender etc line so they said "f*ck it lets just cobble this together and shop it out".
I can't be arsed sorting out a return for the LCD, I'll put this down to a learning experience. Anyway, this will go down as only the second disappointment in my collection, the first one was also a timex funnily enough. My advice, save your pennies.