I’ve decided to treat myself to a new watch. I want one that:
[ol]
[li]is solar powered (because watches die after I get their batteries replaced - and I have been very happy with my Citizen eco-drive)[/li]
[li]is radio controlled (because it’s cool and I hate switching between BST and GMT)[/li]
[li]Has a date indicator that doesn’t need advancing manually at the end of non-31-day months[/li][/ol]
I’ve been looking at some of the watches in the Casio Edifice range (and other similar) and have seen a few I like there. Obviously the ones with LCD date/day indicators are going to meet requirement 3 above, but is the same true of those which have a physical date wheel like (say) this one?
Do modern radio-controlled watches that have a physical date indicator typically automatically advance the date wheel at the end of non-31-day calendar months?
I love it. The titanium is about half the weight of my similar-sized Seiko stainless steel.
The hands are kind of cool technology: they aren’t “direct drive”, but apparently magnetic-controlled. Everything adjusts to your time-zone setting. I don’t know if that meets your needs; I don’t think it can automagically detect what time zone you are in.
It uses the radio signal from Denver (US) or, I believe, somewhere in Germany, to automatically adjust it’s time each night.
The answer to your question is yes. The radio time signal includes the current date and time, and these watches are almost all computer-controlled, so advancing the date correctly is a trivial matter. They should also correctly display February 29 on leap years (like 2016!)
I have a Casio G-Shock, with analog hands and a mechanical date indicator. Similar to this model, although there are a ton of variants in different colors. I like it a lot. It meets all your requirements.
Getting the date right, at least, is old hat. I had a Casio watch years ago that did it right. Nothing “radio controlled” about it. It knew how many days are in each month, including February. It didn’t display the year, but it was part of the internal information you had to set when setting the watch. So it always knew what year it was, even if it didn’t show it. I knew which years were leap-years, so it always rolled over from February to March on the right day.
These modern electronic watches are accurate enough, I’m not sure why it’s important to maintain the time from an external source. Once you set it manually, it keeps time very well. No need for regular time updates, unless you have some very specialized need to have it accurate and synchronized perfectly.
I have a Casio WR200M, which my brother gave me a while ago. It is solar powered and resets by radio, but is not smart enough to figure out the time zone. It is great. Except it goes blank to read the time zone about 2 or 3 am our time, and so did so in the middle of the afternoon when I was in Denmark.
But it can through one button change time zones to display while keeping the home time zone. I love this watch - best one I ever had.