My 46 Cents Watch from China

That is not a typo in the headline, I really bought a watch for 46 (Euro)cents recently from Aliexpress. How come?

I am following some members of the #CasioCult on Mastodon (fans of Casio watches for the uninitiated). They’re regularly posting pictures of their latest acquisitions… and I got to talking to Ruari who posted a picture of a Casio knockoff from the Chinese brand Skmei. Never heard of them before, but I checked out the watch on Aliexpress, and it was listed for 0,46 Euro. Including shipping.

So I bought it. It was a total impulse purchase, but 46 Cents is literally 1/8 the price of the cup of coffee that’s on my table right now.

I honestly wasn’t even expecting to get anything, but a week and a half later it actually arrived. And I am still baffled with the economics of this whole situation… You can’t manufacture a watch and then ship it halfway around the world for 46 cents. Somebody definitely lost money sending this thing to me. I don’t get it.

How is it?

In short: It’s fine for what it cost.

The viewing angle of the LCD is pretty bad, but overall the watch looks nice, and it shows the time, which is what a watch is supposed to do. It feels like nothing though, it’s incredibly light and feels more like a child’s toy than an actual watch. I actually laughed out loud when I first unboxed it (I say unboxed, but it arrived in a plastic bag, so… unbagged it?) because it felt so light and cheap and unsubstantial.

But it works, it looks nice, it cost basically nothing, so I have nothing to complain about.

Except…

Was this a good idea?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot pretty much since the moment I clicked the order button on Aliexpress… did I really need to buy this?

Yes, it was only a fraction of the price of a cup of coffee, and yes, it works and it tells the time and I like how it looks. There’s nothing wrong with it from this point of view.

Still, I didn’t need another watch. I have one that I’m very happy with and that works perfectly fine. And a few things about this new one just rub me the wrong way. I don’t know where it was manufactured, I don’t know under which working conditions, to which environmental standards (if any), it was flown here from China (judging by how fast it arrived)…

At the end of the day, I bought it because it was cheap. I saw that it was only a few cents, and that price short circuited my rational thinking and I just clicked “buy now”. And I feel a bit of shame at the thought that I am this easily manipulated into buying a thing I didn’t actually need, just because it was cheap. My monkey brain saw a shiny thing that was basically free and just grabbed it, and my human brain didn’t have any say in the matter.

So now I have it, I will wear it occasionally and I’m also kind of happy with it. I don’t necessarily regret buying it, but I think I will keep it as a reminder to be a bit more mindful about my purchasing decisions in the future. Even if it’s about something as small and ultimately insignificant as a watch.