Earlier this month, Casio launched the F-B100W-1A in Japan at ¥8,800. The initial allocation sold out within days. The watch is now listed in the UK at £55–70, and the tech press has been uniformly enthusiastic: “Casio just gave its most iconic digital watch a fitness-tracker makeover,” as T3 put it. Esquire called it a “mega-affordable Apple Watch alternative.”

The F-B100W takes the F-91W — the most-sold watch in history, with 100 million units produced since June 1989 — and adds Bluetooth connectivity, automatic time adjustment, and a step counter. It’s being framed as a modernization. A long-overdue upgrade. Casio finally bringing its icon into the 21st century.

That framing is exactly backwards.

The F-91W’s Defining Feature Was Its Refusal to Connect

The F-91W has been in continuous production for 37 years. It sells roughly 3 million units annually. It costs between $15 and $30. Its battery lasts seven years. It has a stopwatch, an alarm, and a backlight. That’s it.

What it doesn’t have is more important than what it has. The F-91W doesn’t have an app. It doesn’t have a terms of service. It doesn’t have a privacy policy. It doesn’t have a firmware update schedule. It doesn’t have a data trail. It doesn’t have a notification system. It doesn’t have a subscription tier.

The F-91W is the last product in the developed world that doesn’t want anything from you. It tells time. That’s the entire transaction. You pay $15 once, and for the next seven years, it tells you what time it is. No engagement metrics. No retention funnels. No monthly active users.

That’s not a bug. That’s the product.

The F-B100W Is a Surrender, Not an Upgrade

The F-B100W changes all of that. It has Bluetooth. It has an app. It has a data trail. It has a terms of service. It has a privacy policy. It has a firmware update schedule.

And here’s the uncomfortable part: the F-B100W is worse at being a watch than the F-91W. Bluetooth is a power hog. The F-91W’s seven-year battery life is a direct consequence of its refusal to connect. The F-B100W, with its Bluetooth radio and step counter, will need charging or battery replacement far more frequently. Casio hasn’t published the F-B100W’s battery life yet, but the laws of physics are not on its side.

So what is the F-B100W actually for? It’s not a better F-91W. It’s a worse fitness tracker. At £55–70, it’s competing with Xiaomi Mi Bands at £30 and Amazfit trackers at £50 — devices with better sensors, better apps, and better battery life. The F-B100W doesn’t win any of those comparisons.

What it wins is the comparison to the F-91W. And that’s the point. Casio isn’t upgrading the F-91W. It’s replacing it.

A product manager at a competing wearable company, reached via Slack, was more candid: “Casio just spent 37 years building the only product in the world with zero churn, and now they’re adding a churn mechanism.”

The “Dumb Tech” Movement Is a Luxury, Not a Movement

The F-91W has become a mascot for the “dumb tech” movement — the people who buy Light Phones and dumbphones and celebrate the F-91W as proof that you don’t need a smartwatch. The F-91W is held up as evidence that disconnection is a viable choice. That you can opt out.

The F-B100W is Casio’s answer to that movement. And the answer is: no, you can’t.

Casio knows its own sales numbers. It knows that the F-91W’s market is bifurcating. On one side, the people who buy it because it’s $15 and tells time — they don’t care about step tracking. On the other side, the people who buy it as a statement — a rejection of the smartwatch. The F-B100W serves neither group. It’s too expensive for the first and too connected for the second.

So who is it for? It’s for the people in the middle. The people who need a step counter because their doctor told them to walk more. The people who need Bluetooth because they can’t be bothered to set the time manually. The people who need a fitness tracker but can’t afford an Apple Watch.

Those people exist. They’re the mass market. And they don’t want disconnection. They want connection, just cheaper.

The F-B100W is Casio’s admission that the F-91W’s defining feature — its refusal to connect — is no longer a feature. It’s a liability. And that’s not a triumph of innovation. It’s a failure of imagination.

The F-91W proved that a product could succeed for 37 years by refusing to want anything from its customers. The F-B100W proves that even Casio doesn’t believe that anymore.

Sources