Wave Ceptor Atomic Watch Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a ham radio operator, and a stickler for accurate time (often setting my old digital watch to WWV on the Shortwave Bands and having considered myself lucky to have discovered a $30 Timex digital with ~1 second variance in about 1 weeks time by setting the time on the watches at the store, and coming back a few days later and checking for variation). I currently own two other WWVB (60kHz) time pieces at home with varying results (regarding reception/sync). I was a little cautious about a watch being able to recieve this very longwave signal, but it does. I live in Oklahoma City (barely within the supposed 600 mile daytime range of WWVB), and haven't had much luck with it during the daytime, but haven't had any trouble getting it to manually sync and autosync at night when I'm asleep. Last night it didn't - and I think that's because my PC on the otherside of the wall from the head of my bed puts out a tremendous amount of Radio Frequency Interference (I notice this on Shortwave, and it is just as likely to happen over the WWVB signal since my atomic clocks don't like to sync near the PC either). However, the fewtimes I've been on the otherside of the house (e.g. kitchen) and manually sync'd - it worked most of the time.

What I really like about this watch - besides the autosync feature - is that you can set a dual timezone - and they have one that is for GMT (Greenwich Mean Time - a.k.a. Universal Coordinated Time). Unlike the LON (London) timezone, try as I might, GMT won't accept a Daylight Savings Time adjustment ... which is a GOOD thing! So - next time I'm logging a contact on the radio - I just press one button and have the current GMT time to write in the log (handy for pilots also!).

Something not evident in any of the photos of this watch - it looks like it has a black dial face - but it is actually semi-transparent. At night, when I push the light button - I can actually see the Hour and Minute hands silhouettes in addition to the digital display at the bottom - all backlit with a aqua-green Elecroluminescent glow. Otherwise, the dial normally looks like a flat black dial. There is no second hand - which isn't a big issue. The light does not stay on as you hold the button down (power saving feature). All it takes is a momentary press, and it stays on for a little more than 1 second (definatly less than 2 seconds).

Another cool feature is that you can adjust the minute hand by '20 second' steps. That means there are 60x3 (or 180) little steps the minute hand takes each hour around the dial. Every 20 seconds, the minute hand makes a small 2 degree jump. This is pretty cool in my book. After I made a simple adjustment in the hand position, I've left it alone, and it's doing great! (The analog watch always sticks with the primary digital time zone - so switching to the secondary time zone view does not change your analog watch.)

There is a type of countdown timer - but it is based upon a target alarm setting (NOT like the type of timer that counts down on your microwave oven where you tell it 30 minutes and watch it countdown). However, if you've set the "target alarm" for 8 AM for when you're supposed to be at work (or set it for when you get 'off' work at 5:30), and you click over to the target alarm and activate it, and it is 10:30 at night... it tells you that you've got 9 hours and 30 minutes until you've got to be at work (sorta handy). I guess if you're into space shots - you can treat this as a handy reminder of the launch taking place into space - or if you're a ham operator waiting for an anticipated satellite flyover - set it and you can see when it is getting close. The time you set rolls over every 24 hours - so it will repeat this every day until you change it.

I've tried setting the 'Snooze' Alarm for early in the morning (when I ought to get up - but often sleep through) - and it hasn't stirred me yet. The snooze alarm, as I understand it, is supposed to repeat up to 7 times every 5 minutes (i.e. if I set it for 5:30 AM, it should go off at 5:30, 5:35, ..., and 6:00 unless I stop it). The hourly 'Signal' is two little pips - a little longer delay than I'm accustomed to hearing on most casio watches. Whenever an alarm does go off - it lasts for only 10 seconds. I gather this is an attempt to conserve battery power (supposedly rated at 2 years - but probably closer to 12-18 months if you take quite a few peeks at the dial using the light and make use of the autosync feature).

There's also a feature for tagging the current time into a memory. I haven't used this yet, but I think it would come in handy if you just started a contact and weren't able to log down the time that it started (or stopped). It could also come in handy if you were traveling and needed to gauge roughly when you left and when you arrived.

I happen to have bought the metal band version at a local super-retailer, and it was a good idea because the jewelry department lady had to remove three of the band links to get it to fit well (it was way too big for my wrist - and I'm not a small person).

If you are a world traveler and change your primary time zone to something other than the four main time zones in the Continental U.S., then be prepared to lose the ability to have autosync work. I guess the watch is only designed to work with the U.S. time transmitter. When you set the primary timezone to something outside of the U.S., it assumes you are too far to be in range to sync to the automic clock, and hence - you're stuck manually setting the time (and manually adjusting DST) as needed.

My only concern is that they don't have a dual analog/digital with the Atomic sync feature AND solar. The G-Shock's have them ... but they are way too big for my tastes (unless I was really active). This watch looks great in the office with out looking like a kid's timepiece.

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Product Description:
50 Meter water resistant. Electro-Luminescent backlight with Afterglow. Atomic Watch, recieves time calibration radio signals which keep the displayed time accurate. Time calibration signal reception Auto-Recieve function. World time, 29 time zones, 30 cities, Daylight-saving time on/off. Date alert, Display flashes when set date is reached. 1/100th second stopwatch, split/lap time, 1st-2nd place times. 4 daily alarms and 1 snooze alarm. Auto-calendar (Pre-programmed until the year 2096). Accuracy +/- 20 Seconds per month. Approximate battery life: 2 years on CR 1620 .

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