I do not like them anywhere.
Digital displays, I do not like them. I am old enough to remember the first Pulsars, back when they were an American brand, Hamilton’s last stand and a brave foray into modernity. My grandfather built desk clocks with the same red display, because he could, because it was “new”. Those old Pulsars, and the Bulova and others that followed were two hand watches, meaning that they required your other hand to operate. The display had a button that would let it light up to tell you the time. If it were always on the battery had a life that was measured in hours. It is hard to claim that they were an improvement over anything.
A few years later Seiko and Casio created the modern displays with weak backlights. Timex had its Ironman, Bill Clinton’s famous watch of the people. I was in high school in the 1980’s when everyone started wearing these little digital watches. I wore a very conventional looking Swatch. No fancy design or colors, just a plastic watch with a guard with black hands and a white dial. I was not (and am not) a mechanical snob. I spent two decades wearing nothing but quartz watches. I wasn’t looking for some imagined “soul” in my watch.
But, I also did not want something that looked like it could also be on my microwave or tape deck or a little cheap kid’s watch from a happy meal. Because, no matter how you gussie it up, it is always the actual display that is lacking. I have tried to find some unified theory of why digital displays are repellant to me. I can’t. They just have a cheapness and sameness. Put it in a Breitling or Omega and it looks like a $30 Casio. I have no nostalgia for these (I think that drives a lot of the market). They just leave me cold. There is no equivalent to Breguet numerals or stick indices in digital watches, just some numbers in a row.
So, do “extreme” things in G-Shocks. Pretend you are a tech mogul in some little cheap Casio. I wear blue suits, I will wear a real watch.
The Escapement Room 