One of Casio’s simplest, and most elegant, watches is the AN-9.
It does one thing, and one thing only. Tells the time with an analog display. There isn’t even a backlight.
You can choose between two types of display — the one you can see in the photo with the seconds around the outside, and one where there is a second hand to join the minute and hour hands.
This one is my preference (when you have a second hand on an LCD display it’s the same size, give or take, as the minute hand, and at a glance is hard to tell which is which) and for a watch that doesn’t do much, it’s hard not to look at it often.
Casio made this in two different shapes – the AN-7 and AN-8 in a squarer-looking case, and the AN-9 and AN-120 in a round case. It uses the QW104 module (the QW103 was also a dual display analog LCD).
Unfortunately the QW103 and QW104 bleed — A LOT!
With the QW103 watches, it’s often the pressure of the battery on the LCD that causes it to crack and bleed (it takes a CR-2016 but would be better with a CR-2012 since some CR-2016 batteries are quite a bit thicker than they should be.
With the QW104 there are a number of things that cause it. Batteries again — this takes a 366 battery which is uncommon so people often drop a 381/391 in it which is unfortunately a touch thicker. Also, the LCD is super-thin, probably the thinnest of any Casio LCD I’ve seen. Shocks or drops would almost certainly cause the LCD to crack as there’s little protection and its under pressure.
So whenever you see these for sale, they either don’t work, or have a bleeding LCD – or both…
I was lucky enough to find a few NOS LCDs for this module and was able to change the bleeding one with a good one.
So I’ll wear this often but am under no illusions it won’t last forever — lucky I still have a couple of spare LCDs if this starts to bleed.