Tyler Barrera
I've purchased about a dozen watch bands, and this is the first one I am buying again - because I wore it so long, it broke. Leather or stronger silicone would not have broken, but I wore this daily for a long time. I wore it so much because I like it.It is soft, much softer than leather or the resin (plastic) that comes from the factory on Casio watches. Leather bands have their place, but not daily wear for me. Fabric (canvas or woven nylon) can also give a soft and pliable band, but this soft silicone is good.It fits on my relatively small wrist without the end sticking up, because it is not super long, and because it has two sliding loops to "tie down" the band. I usually position one loop near the buckle and the other near the free end. With small wrists, having the free end stick out a lot can get caught on things. This is not a problem with these Barton bands.I like having two sliding loops (tie-downs) in general.The metal buckle is fine, it is easy to open and close and it never discolored. I can see that the metal edges are worn, but it is silver all the way down, it is not plated. I would prefer an engraving on the buckle, but a bad engraving is worse than nothing and this is an affordable band.The metal buckle is frankly better than a plastic buckle, for ease of fastening and durability, but a plastic buckle might have been color-matched. I like the silver accent, though.BIGGEST COMPLAINT: The inner surface of the silicone is gently scored in a square grid, or knurled. This makes it less sweaty than smooth-faced bands, but the little grooves accumulate white gunk, which comes out as white powder when I scratch it. I think this may be dried soap, from hand washing. It may also be dried sweat, but it's really entirely white.Smooth-textured silicone would have a different problem, it would trap more sweat in a liquid state, and possibly become sticky.The only way to avoid these problems is to get a leather band, which I don't want most of the time.I like that it can be removed without a spring bar tool (a V-poker stick), because the spring bars have little knobs that can be actuated with a fingernail. So swapping bands is easy. The band doesn't come off by accident, it is reliable.DURABILITY: It developed some shiny patches on the outer face, likely from rubbing. They look okay. The hole that I used most often looks identical to the others, which is impressive, usually it would be reamed out. One of the sliding loop tie-downs has a chunk missing. And it ultimately snapped apart at one end, coming free of the spring bar and becoming useless. So I am replacing it. But it lasted many hundreds of days, washing dishes and showering with it.STYLE: Very simple, very classy. No logos, even color, rectangular with no flares. My favorite kind of style.The band can rotate like 270 degrees around the spring bar (the lug), so you can lay it flat on a nightstand, you can slip the bands together and it will stand up on a nightstand like a clock. You can keep the watch flat in a pocket.Out of a dozen watch bands, this is the first one I am re-buying. It's good.
