Why You Should be Stoked for Casio's Automatic Titanium Field Watch

Casio is without a doubt top shelf when it comes to pure value, an undying legacy, and a fanbase that will die on the hill of the Japanese timekeeping juggernaut as a "god-tier" brand. About mid-last year, we were singing our praises about Casio's debut in the automatic watch space with its Edifice EFK series.

It's insane to think that it took the Japanese company that started out by making calculators to make honest-to-goodness automatic timepieces 50 years to land on an automatic watch. This expands its already vast collection of battery-operated gems into much more intricately engineered options for those who crave sophistication.

This time Casio is releasing its first mainline automatic timepiece with an intriguing choice to go with a robust field watch reminiscent of something like a Hamilton Khaki, let alone one fashioned out of titanium. The Edifice line has always been the brand’s sportier, more elevated shelf, so putting a mechanical movement under the plain Casio name on the dial, the same name that sits on the F-91W and even the Casio CA-53 calculator watch, is a strong statement of the company's meaning of business in quality watchmaking.

Casio' CMK-100 is powered by what the watchmaker calls the Casio Module 57666 Japanese-made automatic movement, which is most likely a Miyota or the Seiko movement used in the Edifice EFK. The Japanese watchmaker hasn’t named the maker, and the clues on offer are a power reserve of about 42 hours and a stated resistance to magnetism, the first of which happens to match what Miyota rates its 8-series movements at, while Seiko’s NH35 is usually quoted at 41.

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Casio Japan's teaser for the CMK-100, which goers on sale Nov. 12 in the US and to be announced in Asian markets

What makes the CMK-100 a big-ticket prospect for many watch enthusiasts is the titanium case finished with ion plating and a titanium carbide coating that measures about 38 mm across and 11.4 mm thick, the same diameter Hamilton uses for the Khaki Field Mechanical that most people picture when they hear the words field watch. Hamilton does sell Khaki Field references in titanium, and they cost a good deal more than anything Casio is asking for here. The crown and case back both screw down for 100 meters of water resistance, the sides of the crown carry a knurled finish for grip, and a sapphire crystal sits over the dial, which is a feature we usually expect to pay extra for at this size and weight.

The Casio field watch has a flat top and a wide bezel that is definitely on the heavier side aesthetically and on a visual footprint basis than what the billed 38 mm would suggest.

This is definitely a piece for those who love their tool watches with field watch trimmings. If you pit it against something like a Hamilton Khaki, the latter is usually on the slimmer and domed side in the tradition the US-issued military watches the legendary piece takes its cues from. So, these two don't really look much alike.

Cassio went with a more finely textured finish for the dial, with a special stamping process. It also prints large Arabic numerals in multiple layers of phosphorescent paint that results in slightly raised-off hour indices that glow in the dark.

If you have even surface-level knowledge of watches of this form factor and price range, the beloved Seiko 5 series also has a lot of field-style sports models that inevitably deserve to be stacked up against Casio's new brainchild.

But across Seiko's budget-friendly catalog, none of them really compare to the titanium and sapphire layers Casio is betting on, including a much lighter case on the wrist.

The Casio CMK-100 features robust sapphire crystal and a made-in-Japan automatic movement with magnetic resistance

You can also switch out the bracelet with a cloth, military-style strap

The titanium bracelet carries the case’s design straight through for a matched, lightweight look that suits the slab-sided bezel best; the thick nylon cloth strap is the purist’s pick and the most faithful to the field watch genre; and the vegetable-tanned Tuscan leather, which Casio says grows more comfortable and picks up a richer luster the longer it is worn, takes the watch somewhere dressier and rewards the owner those fortunate enough to witness the development of a timeless patina.

When we wrote about the EFK, the bracelet reminded us of a Citizen Tsuyosa, and the silhouette drifted into Tissot PRX territory, and we said we wanted more original design from a brand with this much history behind it. A field watch is a genre piece by definition, so some familiarity comes with the territory, but the textured dial, the wide flat bezel, and the case material give the CMK-100 more of its own character than the EFK ever had.

The three versions headed to the UK, the CMK-100TC-1AER on fabric, the CMK-100TL-1AER on leather, and the CMK-100TD-1AER on the titanium bracelet, go on sale on November 12 through Casio’s official online store and select specialty retailers, priced from £290 to £390. That translates to an estimated P24,000 to P32,000 in the Philippines at roughly P83 to the pound, before any local markup. UK prices include VAT, and Casio Philippines hasn’t announced a local release or price, so the number on a Philippine tag could land somewhere else entirely.

The diverse lineup of options for the CMK-100 gives you a breadth of options and strap monster possibilities that are unheard of at the projected price point.

Casio released its first wristwatch, the Casiotron, in 1974, just as the industry was trading traditional wound movements for quartz and digital displays, a shift a calculator company was well placed to take advantage of. The F-91W looks enough like the G-Shock that the two often get lumped together, but its smaller frame produced variants of its own, including the F-91W Digital Sport Watch, with a slimmer rectangular resin case, and the Illuminator, which has a slightly larger LCD.

The CA-53W calculator data bank watch commands the same universal respect, and it has turned up on the wrists of Marty McFly in the Back to the Future films and Walter White in Breaking Bad, a fair amount of screen time for a watch with a calculator on it.

There aren't a lot of watch brands with the staying power and the timeless allure of Casio, a player celebrated by even the snobbiest of enthusiasts.

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