Casio Goes Into the Field With a Titanium, Sapphire and Miyota CMK-100 for Under €300

You can count on one hand the watches under €300 that combine a titanium case, sapphire crystal and screw-down crown. Casio has just added one. The CMK-100 is the brand’s third automatic collection, after the integrated-bracelet Edifice EFK-100 and EFK-200, and the first one in the field watch field. And woah, is it a good deal! And a pretty decent watch.

The case is 38mm wide and 11.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 44.7mm, so it will sit well on almost any wrist. Three versions use natural titanium, one is ion-plated dark grey and one rose gold. Every case gets a titanium carbide coating to help it resist scratches, which is good because raw titanium can scratch pretty easy. The bezel is broad and flat, the crown is knurled, and the edges are polished against brushed flanks. The caseback screws in and water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial has a heavy grained texture with raised Arabic numerals and baton markers, all filled with lume. You get black with white lume, black with vintage-toned lume, dark grey on the grey model and brown on the rose gold one. The pencil hands are brushed and lumed too. The date window at three uses a white disc, and on the dark dials it’s the one thing I’d change. In fact, I'll drop the date all together.

Inside is the Miyota calibre 8215, an automatic beating at 3Hz, a 42-hour power reserve and hacking seconds. Casio rates it at -20 to +40 seconds a day, but most of these movements fall well within that range. The 8215 is relatively reliable and any watchmaker can service it. The CMK-100TD-1A comes on a brushed titanium bracelet with a three-fold clasp and weighs 98 grams in total. The CMK-100TC-1A and CMK-100TCC-8A are on cloth straps, the CMK-100TL-1A and CMK-100TCL-5A on leather, and those weigh 55 grams.

The Casio CMK-100 is priced at €299 on a cloth strap and €399 on the bracelet, available now. This is a very good field watch for the money. See more on the Casio website.