Ever wonder how long your Digital Watch battery will last? As someone with an unhealthy number of digital watches, this is definitely an important question for me. Well, I’ve done my research, and this is what I found out.
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How long does a Digital Watch battery last? A battery in a Digital Watch will last on average 4 to 6 years, but can be as low as 2 years and as high as 10 years, depending primarily on the model of Digital Watch, and the amount the back light and alarm is used.
You’ll find that many Digital Watches will advertise a particular battery life, and while that’s a handy general guide to work with, there are actually quite a few factors involved in how long your watch battery will last which are beyond the control of the manufacturers.
Factors effecting Battery Life of a Digital Watch
Let’s go into a bit more detail about the various factors that effect your watch battery life.
Model / Design of the Digital Watch
As eluded to in the above section, not all Digital Watches offer the same battery life. The complexity of the circuitry and the type of features on offer can have an effect on battery life.
For example, if a Digital Watch has a fantastically strong back light, then as useful as that is, it will almost definitely use up more battery power than a weaker back light.
Another example would be a watch that has complex circuitry to facilitate a more feature rich Digital Watch. The additional circuitry can potentially use more battery power than a simpler design, and sometimes require more than 1 battery to power it.
In addition, there are some watch making manufacturers that just do a better job of building Digital Watches with long battery life. The most obvious manufacturer being Casio. This Digital Watch making behemoth have a range of watches that boast a 10 year battery!
Back Light and Alarm usage
The back light and the alarm are two of the biggest energy draining features you’ll find on the majority of Digital Watches. As such, it makes sense that the more you use those features, the shorter the watches battery life will be. The effect can be quite dramatic. If you’re a heavy back light and alarm user, you could potentially lower the battery life of your watch by a matter of years.
Battery age
When a battery is sitting on the shelf (or sitting in a brand new watch before being bought), it will slowly but surely lose power. Granted, it’s not a quick process. It takes up to 10 years for the watch battery to lose all it’s power. However, if you inadvertently buy a 5 year old battery, it’s obviously going to die a lot faster than a 1 year old battery would. Batteries come with “Best Before” dates, so keep an eye on them.
Watch age
A brand new watch has fresh new parts and fresh new circuits, all performing at peak efficiency, but as your watch ages the parts and circuits gradually degrade and tend to drain more power from the battery. In older Digital Watches you can often see a decrease in battery life of anywhere form 25% to 40%.
Water damage and corrosion
Water damage is never good for a watch. Water in the watch and subsequent corrosion will most definitely effect battery life, not to mention the correct functioning of your watch in general. A quick tip if you get water damage in your watch is to put the watch in a closed container full of salt of uncooked rice overnight. The salt or uncooked rice absorbs the moisture out of the watch very efficiently. After that, it’s also a good idea to have your friendly neighborhood watch repairer take a look to make sure there’s no lasting damage.
Do Digital Watches last longer than Analog Watches on the same battery?
So lets say you have exactly the same type of battery in two different watches – an Analog Watch and a Digital Watch. The batteries are the same age and the watches are both in good condition. Which watch is going to last longer? The simple answer here is that the Digital Watch is more likely to last longer than the Analog watch. While an Analog Watch has gears and moving parts that do a good job of draining the battery, a Digital Watch generally has no moving parts at all, and therefore uses less battery power for basic operation.
To go into a little more detail, the biggest battery drainer for a Digital Watch tends to be the crystal oscillator – i.e. the part of the watch that vibrates the quartz crystal to regulate the time. The other parts of the watch need minimal battery power to operate. Analog Watches also have a crystal oscillator which results in the same significant drain on battery power, but as I mentioned above, they also come with battery draining gears and moving parts. So you can see that at a basic design level, Analog Watches are built to require more battery to operate than Digital Watches.
However, once again, if we take into account the other variables that can effect battery life, like how often the user operates the back light or alarm on a Digital Watch, the result can change significantly. So if we have a Digital Watch with a heavily used back light, it could easily end up with a shorter battery life than an Analog Watch that’s not overused.
In the end though, it does tend to be the Analog Watch variety that will lose battery power faster than Digital Watches, but you’ll just need to be aware of how the way you use your watch can effect battery life.
Which Digital Watches have the longest battery life?
As I’ve mentioned, Digital Watches in general are quite efficient in their use of battery power. However, some Digital Watches are more efficient than others.
Casio have a large range of Digital Watches that boast a 10 year battery life with normal use. That’s pretty spectacular, and definitely worth a look.
The Casio AE1200WHD-1A – otherwise known as the “Casio Royale” due to it’s similarities to the Digital Watch worn by James Bond in Octopussy – is one of the more interesting Casio 10 Year Battery watches you’ll find.
There’s also the hugely popular Casio W-800H-1AV Digital Watch, which is rumored to be the most popular watch on Amazon.
There’s even an Analog Digital Watch, the Casio AW-80-7AV which, even with it’s analog moving parts still comes with a 10 year battery life! Casio definitely know what they’re doing in this arena. I’ve really only scratched the surface with the range of 10 year battery Casio’s, so do yourself a favor and research what they have on offer.
You also have the option of completely skipping the whole “battery life” debate by going out and buying a solar powered digital watch. You’ll still eventually have to change the rechargeable cell in your solar watch as well, but that can potentially not be required for decades, so you’ll have time to prepare yourself!
Casio 800h Watch Battery
There are plenty of great solar Digital Watches out there. From the range of Solar G-Shocks (The G5600E-1 with it’s retro styling is one of my favorites), to the gorgeous Swiss made Analog Digital Solar watches like the Tissot T-Touch T091.420.44.051.00 if you’re after something really special. There’s plenty to choose from, so again, get out there, do your research, and find one that works for you.
Related Questions;
How long does a digital watch last? Depending on the build quality, a reasonably well looked after Digital Watch can last for decades with minimal servicing required beyond the occasional battery change.
Does stopping a watch save the battery? Stopping an Analog Watch by pulling out the crown will save battery power. Digital Watches don’t have a crown or anything equivalent and therefore this battery saving technique wouldn’t be possible on a Digital Watch.
Usually, I wear an old Accutron 214 wristwatch, but the possibility of an upcoming long sailing trip had me thinking that I should get something a little more durable and easier to replace, ideally with an alarm.
Other than the alarm being a bit underwhelming, I’m happy with my new Casio W-800H, especially following this quick modification to enable a countdown timer!I had seen a reference to adding the timer on the Internet, including a mention of 4 more programmable alarms, but all the documentation on it seemed to be in the form of youtube videos or forum threads mostly full of pictures of dude’s wrists.After some time looking through those, not finding the meaning of jumpers that I’ve numbered 1-5 below, I set out to improve the Internet -just a little- by making some documentation that’s a little more pragmatic:
Casio makes a bajillion watches, of many different models.Within those many models are a few series where each model in a series has similar features to the other models in the same series.By making a small number of different PCBs for the series, and configuring them per watch model, Casio saves lots of engineering effort and manufacturing cost.In this case, the configuration is done via solder jumpers; we’re going to tell the PCB that it’s in a slightly fancier watch!
You’ll need:
- A watch - this is based on a W-800H, but there are bound to be other models with the same PCB.
- #00 philips (it may actually be JIS?) screwdriver
- Fine tweezers or X-Acto type tool, for prying
- Fine soldering iron
- Fine solder and/or wick
Steps
- Take the watch apart, remove the battery as if replacing it.
- The “movement” (I presume that’s what it’s called in an electronic watch…) is a plastic clamshell, with the PCB and battery holder attached to one side, and the LCD attached to the other. The clamshell is held together with a bit of stamped steel - gently lift the steel clips and pry apart the clamshell. The PCB should stay with the battery side of the clamshell, be careful not to pull it away from that side, because there are some tiny springs retained there.
- A white plastic spacer may fall out from between the LCD and PCB, and perhaps one or both elastomeric connectors (rectangular rubber looking thingies that electrically connect the PCB with the LCD). When reassembling, I think the spacer thing is oriented as in the below photo, and the elastomeric connectors drop in to the slots behind the top and bottom edges of the LCD.
- Set solder jumpers as desired - “open” means solder removed, “shorted” or “closed” means connected with a blob of solder.
- Reverse above instructions; you may need to clear the watch memory as the sticker on the battery instructs - I didn’t bother and things seemed to work OK, in the 14 times I reassembled my watch to figure out the below table.
| Jumper number | Effect when shorted | Factory default |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Timer Disable | shorted |
| 1 | ? | shorted |
| 2 | ? | shorted |
| 3 | 5x alarms | open |
| 4 | ? | open |
| 5 | Dual time disable | open |
Casio 800h Watch Battery Replacement
Unfortunately, I didn’t consider that some of the jumpers might affect something about the piezo beeper until starting to write this post…
Here’s the top of the PCB, showing the solder jumpers:
Here’s what I think the orientation of the spacer should be; the two sides of the clamshell are opened like a book: