So Casio fans, there is often talk about how module 593's major failing is its backlight. And yes, it is pretty weak and uneven. I too have thrown shade at it and yet, if I am totally honest I don't recall ever having struggled to read it in real life.
While in photos it often comes out looking totally unreadable, I find that with the naked eye (in the dark at night), I have always read the entire display just fine.
Also, don't get me wrong, the lighting found in similar watches with the “Illuminator™” or multi LEDs is more pleasant, especially aesthetically but the basic lighting in the 593 seems to me to be good enough for real world usage. Maybe something about my eyes and light sensitivity or how and when I use the light? 🤷🏼
Just another thought. I think there is a difference between going into a darkened room in the middle of the day, compared to checking your watch in bed in the middle of the night (assuming you wear a watch at night or have it on the bedside table).
For the latter your scotopic vision (night vision) will be fully functioning and you will be much more sensitive to the blue-green wavelengths that the little LED produces light in the range of.
To expand on that point, "The eye takes approximately 20–30 minutes to fully adapt from bright sunlight to complete darkness and becomes 10,000 to 1,000,000 times more sensitive than at full daylight."†
Thus waking at night the brightness of the LED may be sufficient, while if you just walk into a dark room in the middle of the day… it might not be.
So perhaps my lack of issues with this form of lighting are that my primary use case for the LED is looking at the time in bed to discern how close it is to morning. And indeed with the LED strategically placed on the left (closest to the hours), I often would not need to read the entire time anyway. Being able to tell it is 3:3…[something] would be good enough, if my plan is to wake at 6AM.
I suppose for someone who often enters darkened rooms, that LED however might not be good enough.
Also for those of you who do have problems, have any of you tried one of these simple "backlight spreaders"?
It sounds too good to be true and yet reviews of this simple hack/mod on sites like Etsy are really good.
I am tempted to buy one just to try it out, even though as I said, I am not actually hitting the issue myself. Still… it also looks better and aesthetics are a factor. 🤔
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