Casio Men’s PAG240-1CR Pathfinder Triple Sensor Multi-Function Sport Watch - Best sport watches collection for men and women

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D. Schmidt (Virginia) –

  

I just received this as a gift yesterday and thought I’d post my initial impressions. Should anything change drastically I will post updates later:

I spent about 2 hours yesterday reading the manual, customizing the settings, and playing with all of the functions. I then used it all day at work, and came home today. Here’s my rundown…

World Clock – 4.5/5 Has one city for every time zone (or UTC offset, however you want to think about it), being near Washington D.C. I have to set my city code to “New York”, besides that it has a very convenient feature of showing UTC time initially when moving to World Time mode, this is great for all those military and government types always wondering what Zulu time is! Would like to have a couple more cities per time zone.

Sunrise/Sunset Time – 5/5 Works great, once you change your lat/long settings for your current location, times are within a couple minutes of any other information I could find online. No issues.

Compass – 4.5/5 Using my informal test, the compass seemed to be more or less accurate. Would probably get you out of a sticky situation if needed.

Altimeter – 2/5 Out of the box this stated I was about 420 ft above sea level, I am in fact only about 30. I told it my correct altitude as per the manual yesterday, today after coming home from work I checked it again and it now states that I am about 120 feet above sea level, sitting on the same couch. I’ll try setting my own value again and see what happens. I guess as long as it’s accurate within a hundred feet or so that’s not bad for being on a watch. Shirely I wouldn’t start landing a 747 off of its advice, but not bad.

**update** So far no matter how many times I set the correct value the watch will be hundreds of feet off a day later. I’ll contact Casio to see what they say.

Barometer/Thermometer – The baroemter reading was almost exactly what weather.com told me the value was for my area. The thermometer seems accurate provided you give it a few minutes off your wrist to get an accurate reading. I might do some research and return with barometer impressions.

General Display and Function – 5/5 The dial is pretty big and has a lot of information. It is easy to scroll through the different modes and feels very solid. You can definitely take this out to the field or camping and not have to worry about it holding up. Not too big that I feel like I can’t wear it every day.

Solar Battery Function – 5/5 I’ve been playing with my watch off and on for a full day, and have hit the illumination button quite a few times and the battery indicator hasn’t moved off of “high” yet.

Closing Comments – The only thing this watch is missing is the atomic clock syncing, it’s up to you if that’s worth the extra $100 or so. Buttons are large and easy to press, quality is great, and everything works as advertised. This watch has more functions and memory storage spaces than I think the geekiest person can really use to its fully potential I’m not that much of an adventurer but I think this will serve me well traversing the urban jungles and the occasional state park. I replaced a $40 Timex Ironman that performed basic functions flawlessly. Hopefully this lives up to my expectations.

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 Comments (8)

After being on the edge for a long time, I bit the bullet and purchased the PAG240. I am happy with it for the most part

Rather than do a full review, here are some observations/details to supplement other reviews:

-Pictures don’t do the watch justice! Look at one in person if you can, or search Youtube. Far from being obnoxiously flashy, it has a handsome utilitarian/rugged look to it. In my opinion, silver pathfinders try to look pricier and will attract more attention, including unwanted ones. If you want full functionality, go with this.

-The watch weighs ~60g/2.12oz. That’s 24 modern American pennies, or ~11 American quarters. The entire face (including side buttons) has the same diameter as the top lip of a standard soda can. I wear it every day without noticing its weight or size.
-It has an optional (default on) power save mode which turns off the display after 60-70 min of inactivity. This will only activate between 10PM-6AM. Simply tilting the watch a bit will wake it up.
-The timer can be set for hours/minutes (not seconds). The timer can count down from 24 hours.
-The sunrise/sunset mode makes good use of the overlay LCD slices.
-The compass can be adjusted for magnetic declination (1°resolution) and calibrated with bidirectional and northerly. It can also store an angle in memory.
-The display is crisp when viewed full on. It becomes hard to read at extreme angles.
-The rotating bezel rotates very fluidly. It’s secured tightly to the face and won’t slip once you set it.
-The alarm is soft, but uses a high pitched frequency (sorta like a smoke detector). I had no trouble hearing it wearing headphones playing music.
-Buttons are easily accessible and require a full push to register. Only time will tell whether they’ll pop out and run for freedom like my old Ironman’s…The light button is a little hard to find by touch in the dark, even with the helpful … guide bumps below it.

-About the altimeter- altitude is calculated using temperature and atmospheric pressure data. The manual suggests placing the watch where temperature is stable during the trip. Short of GPS, there is no way for sensors to accurately measure altitude. This mode is good for relative measurements at best and requires calibration on site before each use.
-Altitude data can be stored automatically every 5 sec (for 1 hr) or 2 min intervals (for 1 day). The data is recorded only when you stay in the altimeter mode. Every time you exit the mode, it accumulates the max/min ascent/descent statistics to the current stored data. You can also store 25 manual measurements.

I was seriously torn between this watch, the PAG40, PAG80, and the PAW1300 series.
-The PAG40 uses regular batteries (good!) but had no timer (dealbreaker).
-The PAG80 has all of PAG240′s features (+extra memory), but no rotating bezel, and the color scheme was undesirable (dealbreaker)
-The PAG1300 has multi-zone atomic timekeeping (good), is slimmer (good!), but loses the cool dual LCD (dealbreaker).

Hope this helps!

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