How to Spot a Fake Casio F-91W in 2019

I ordered online the classic Casio F-91W. It took 3 weeks to arrive in the Philippines from the overseas provider.

It was a long wait and when it arrived, I noticed instantly that the display of the numbers were perfectly vertical instead of usual slightly slanted or italicized numbers on Casio watches. A red flag for me.

The box it came with had the F-91W displayed but it also had on big letters announcing it as an "Analog" watch where in fact it is most popular "digital" watch in the world even for terrorists that after almost 3 decades of production since 1991, still sells around 3 million units a year for Casio. In fact, Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden both own this watch. For terrorists, if you wear a Casio F-91W or its metal variant A-158W, it means you have the skills to use it to time a bomb.

So I tried these two tests:

• Long press on the 12h/24h button. It displayed "CASIo"   - PASSED
• Long press all three buttons. All the LCD segments activated.   - PASSED

It passed both tests that many YouTube videos suggested on how to determine it you have a fake or original F-91W. Well I guess the counterfeiters also watched those videos and learned from it.

But upon closer inspection of the LCD segments, there are font serifs missing on the day display that an original F-91W should have. Then the second digit of the minute numbers should have two segments at the top "8" segment. Only 1 solid segment was there. I encircled these two differences in  LCD segment details in the fake watch image below.

These plus some other minor observations confirmed that what I got was a fake Casio F-91W.
I returned it and got my refund thankfully.

I don't know if there are other counterfeiters out there are able to copy these small details in the LCD segmentation. They are really getting better.

Be careful when buying. Cheers!