Some designs survive because they keep changing. The A168 survived by refusing to. Casio’s cheap digital watch has looked the same since 1995, all printed labels and seven-segment numerals, and now that exact face sits on a ring, shrunk to finger size and rebuilt in full metal.
This is the second Casio ring watch, and it picks a different ancestor than the first. Where the CRW-001 borrowed G-SHOCK’s squared case, this one takes the A168’s slimmer profile, its bracelet links, even the red and blue printing around the display.
Nothing about the face has been simplified for the smaller canvas. It looks like a watch first and jewelry second.
The A168, carried over whole
Start with the printing. ADJUST and MODE run down the left side of the face, LIGHT sits at the right, and ILLUMINATOR and WATER RESIST arc across the bottom. On the wristwatch those labels are decoration with a job to do. At ring scale they become the design itself, the first thing your eye reads before the size sinks in.
Every label earns its space at this size.
The band does the same work in profile. It keeps the A168’s stepped metal links, so from the side the ring follows the line of a bracelet that happens to close around a finger. Casio shot its campaign at a diner table, the ring on one hand and the full-size A168 on the other wrist, and the family resemblance needs no caption.
Two finishes carry the line. Silver keeps the original’s tool-watch plainness. Gold turns the same shape into something closer to jewelry, and at $155 it asks twenty dollars more for the change in register. The gold is an IP coating over the same steel case, which is why the premium stays that small.
The first ring watch reached back to G-SHOCK for its shape when it arrived in December 2024. This one refines the idea. The A168’s slimmer lines suit a finger better than the chunkier case ever did.
One tenth the module, all of the watch
Shrinking the face was the easy part. Behind it sits a working digital module, and Casio’s engineers cut the standard unit down to roughly one tenth its original size. High-density mounting packs the board tighter. A miniature SR621SW battery gives up the room a watch cell would normally take.
The case construction had to change with it. Casio forms the CRW-002 by metal injection molding, shooting a mix of fine metal powder and resin into molds to get the case and band shapes at this scale. It’s how the bracelet’s fine links stay crisp at a size where machining would round them off.
Case, case back and ring are molded as a single piece, then sealed with a special glass adhesive technique. The watch stays water-resistant for daily use, and the battery can still be replaced when it runs down. Battery life runs about two years, and there’s no charging cable to think about. The case measures 25.2 by 18.2 millimeters and stands 6.2 millimeters tall. Fifteen grams is all it adds to a hand.
A light that pulses on the hour
Three buttons survive the shrink, and they run a familiar list. Dual time tracks a second city. The stopwatch counts to a hundredth of a second. An auto calendar keeps the date, and the six-digit display runs in 12- or 24-hour format, seconds ticking in the corner where they belong.
No app. No sensors. No notifications.
Two kinds of light do different jobs. An LED backlight makes the tiny display readable after dark. Time Flash is stranger, and better suited to the format. Set it, and the ring gives off a soft pulsing glow at a chosen moment, or at the top of every hour. It marks time passing without asking you to look at it.
One caution belongs on the record. Casio rates the ring for daily-use water resistance, and the manual draws its line at handwashing, swimming and work in water. On a hand, that line gets tested daily. Read the rating as splash protection.
One size, two spacers
Rings don’t adjust like bracelets, so Casio picked one size and shimmed the rest. Casio makes the CRW-002 in a size 22, a US 10.5, with a 20-millimeter inner diameter. Two spacers in the box bring the fit down to a size 19 or a size 16.
The packaging suits a small object: a dedicated pouch and a silicone stand for displaying it off the finger, the kind of detail a watch box never needs and a ring box probably does.
US pricing puts the silver CRW-002D-1A at $135 and the gold version at $155. Casio sells both in the US this November through its own store, select retailers and the G-SHOCK SoHo store in New York.
A ring watch lives or dies on whether the miniature stays faithful. Plenty of brands would have printed the A168’s face on a plain band and called the job done. Casio kept the labels, the links, the buttons and the stopwatch, then shrank the machinery until all of it fit. The result is a piece of jewelry that still behaves like the inexpensive watch it quotes, and that restraint is rarer than the novelty.
