So many of the cool, revolutionary features of these watches look so hard to use and can't possibly have been used regularly by their owners (translation dictionary lookup? scientific calculator?). Reminds me of the Windows CE devices I was kind of obsessed with as a teenager that were amazing but kind of useless because of their form factor.

I wear my A159W not only because it is quirky, but also because it reminds me of my grandfather.

He had the same watch, and the backlight is so horrible. I have fond memories of him holding it up at an angle to check the time.

I only knew him for a few years of my life in early childhood. We'd go on long walks together in the late afternoon. He'd check the time when it started getting dark so we'd be back home in time for dinner!

We used the calculator back in the 80s

If you think about it instead of pulling out your phone to calculate something back then you could use this

Funny what we had to endure before the age of the touchscreen. The buttons were always so mushy, too. I do miss the tactile feel, though.

I had a CFX-400 back in the day and it was much more convenient to use it than to not use it. The option of running newtons method by hand on paper was much more annoying than using the watch. I mostly used trig features IRL.

As you can see by the small text above and below the screen you pushed F1/F2 to select the scientific operation you wanted and then "exe" it. I don't recall how "inv" worked, if you selected sine and then inv to arcsin() it or if you tapped inv as a modal and then "exe" while its inverted.

It really wasn't any harder to use than any calculator watch ever shipped. I imagine no one under age 40 has ever used a calculator watch but they were pretty easy to use, just imagine a basic phone calculator app on your wrist but easier to use tactile because of the keyboard.

Its primary downfall was 1) being very expensive compared to carrying a HP calculator in your pocket 2) the buttons and general construction were extremely delicate, the body was just chrome plated plastic IIRC.

Watches in the 80s were like phones in the 2010s it was assumed you'd only get a couple years use out of them before "having to" replace them due to poor components or style, so there's no reason to ship a long term reliable one. These were not "Rolex" lifetime purchases LOL.

Watch bands were also designed to rapidly fail, kind of like fitness bands today.

Watches in the 80s were a very consumerist hobby. Consumerism changes the individual items but the pattern never changes.

Extreme sensor watches were similar to extreme calculator watches but in the 90s. I had a DPX-500, very nice. The barometer drifted too much to be usable. The compass worked very well. As an "outdoor" watch it was fairly durable, rather like desk workers buying "offroad" SUVs that are never driven offroad as the only way to buy a reliable car.