Today is the hottest day of the year, and with the length of time the sun is up for, I thought I'd try one of my solar watches where the charge is a little weak.
This watch is by Seiko, and is part of their Super Runners line of watches. The Super Runners line is, as the name would suggest, a line of sports watches designed to appeal to runners. The watch features are built around this, with a stopwatch with lap recall (up to 145?), and timer modes, as well as a front mounted lap/split button for easy access.
This model is based around the Seiko 5750 module and is a radiowave control solar watch. It has a detailed display over 3 lines, with the top two capable of showing 7 digits, and the bottom line is a dot matrix array. As well as the runners functions, it also has alarm (x2) and world time features. The case is also 10 bar water resistant for all weather use.
The full model number is 5750-0AA1, and it looks like it was made in 2000 (possibly 2010, but I think that is unlikely based on the status of the battery). The watch is on Amazon though (so it could be newer), where it is quoted with a catalogue number of SBDG001 and a price of $158.
As this is an old solar model, it suffers from power issues. It is a common misconception that solar watches will run forever with the help of the sun, but this isn't actually the case. The solar power is stored in a rechargeable battery, or more commonly a capacitor, to cover for when there is no sunlight. These cells suffer from the same problems as old phone batteries in that the more charge and discharge cycles the watch goes through, the less it can be charged next time. This is not noticeable in day-to-day use, but over the years, this builds up end in the end, the watch won't hold any charge. The capacitors are normally replaceable, but are specialist items and so are hard to find.
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