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I paid £10.99 on Black Friday at my local Argos. The retail price specified without the discount was £21.99. £11 is ABSOLUTELY worth it, and I think £22 is good too.
I got the silver version, so it's got a silver outer bezel, dark grey middle bezel, and black inner bezel. It's got four buttons, two on the left and two on the right. Bottom left is 'mode', top left is 'adjust', top right is 'light' for the LED light, and bottom right is '12H/24H'. These buttons are black, and their functions are engraved on the silver bezel. The mid-bezel has nothing on it. The inner bezel, which is underneath the crystal, has relatively little branding for a Casio - the top has their logo and 'alarm chrono' in while and gold-ish respectively while the bottom has '10 year battery' in red.
The display is much larger than the F-91W or W-86, which is great to see. It's not got any colouring on the silver version.
The strap is the typical black that you see on these cheap Casios, and has some ribbing (I think?) nearer the beginning of each part that comes off the timepiece.
On the back is the usual engraving - the Casio logo, its model number, module number in a rectangular box, the material of the back, where it was manufactured, and a two letter code that is indecipherable to me.
As for dimensions, it's 36mm in diameter, but lug-to-lug is a bit of a question mark... since it doesn't actually have lugs. u/takealookatwrist on Reddit says about 41mm.
It feels pretty typical for a resin watch. Very plastic-y, with literally all of it being made of resin except for the back, which is stainless steel. The crystal is apparently also resin, with Casio stating it is 'resin glass'. All of this is generally par for the course, though both my previous Casios have had acrylic crystals instead of resin. I can't say whether this will be any more or less scratch resistant than acrylic.
It apparently weighs 32 grams according to Casio,
The strap feels a bit sturdier compared to the F-91W's and W-86's, but does not appear to be thicker, and actually may be ever so slightly thinner. Unlike the F-91W and W-86, the strap is a bit unique and screws directly into the housing. It's highly unlikely there is replacements that support the 96H's weird strap attachment points.
To meet the absolute bare minimum for me it's got to tell the time in 12 and 24 hour. Good news: it does! The 12H/24H button will switch between each on the default mode, which is... well, telling the time in your local time zone. The big digits are great here, it makes it much easier to read. It also displays the year, month and day in that order at the bottom of the display.
Moving onto the alarm... well, yeah, it's just a single alarm it seems. However, it's got a trick up its sleeve. You can set the date for it, too! Instead of it being daily, it could be on a specific day. Or, a specific month. Or, every day in the specific month you set. This is pretty nice in my opinion, though I do question the usefulness of the last option.
The stopwatch is pretty typical. However, it does look like it can go past 99 minutes and 59 seconds, as its display when reset and not running reads as '0:00:00' with the milliseconds underneath the seconds. The manual confirms this and says it can run for a second under a full 24 hours before it restarts from zero again. It also uses the year area to display the current time, and it even replicates the 12 hour PM marker. I really like that. The Adjust button will reset the stopwatch to zero after it's paused, and will enter split mode while running.
Here's the second trick: dual time! You can have a second clock for another time zone on here. It's accessible by pressing the mode button and just going one press past the stopwatch. It doesn't give you a list of time zones, it's just another clock you can set. You could use this to keep track of, say, the time in other countries where you've got friends or family, or if you're visiting another country, use it to see the time over there. It's nice to see.
Given that the 96H displays Casio's 'Illuminator' branding on the top, I was hoping the LED wasn't going to be complete shite. I was pleasantly surprised - the LED is in the bottom left and points diagonally up to the right corner of the LCD. It's green and bright enough that it illuminates the entire LCD enough to be able to see at night. It's no electroluminescent backlight like on the W-86 (can you imagine?), but it's certainly one of the better LEDs front-lights I've seen at this low price point, especially given its dual time and extra alarm features.
As for the water resistance, Casio rates it for 50 metres, or 5 bars. I haven't tested it, but I assume that it at least meets the rating. Casio could be deliberately rating it lower to play it safe, as many of their watches have survived more than what they say they can before.
I like the W-96H. It's got Timex Ironman Triathlon vibes for the LCD, with its larger digits. The dual time zones and more advanced alarm are great, too, but the perfectly acceptable LED used to illuminate the display has sold this one for me. It's a really good watch for the price point.
The one thing I have to say is a negative is that the strap is proprietary to this model (excluding the 96H's several revisions over the years), so unless someone makes an adapter you are not going to be replacing it. Unless you have an aversion to resin straps though this one will work just fine.
