Watch Review – 85 GHOST

Say the words ‘digital watch’ to a watch enthusiast, and their mind will most likely go to a Casio and, more often than not, that Casio will be an F-91W.  And with good reason.  The F-91W is the world’s best-selling watch, with at least three million units being produced annually.  That many people can’t be wrong and, look, the wisdom of crowds can be a good thing but when it comes to watches, a lot of people don’t want to follow the crowd.

The GHOST by 85 Watches, pronounced ‘Eight Five’, not ‘Eighty Five’ (although if you’re a big fan of Alien3, you can go with the latter – holy shit, Alien fandom deep cuts all day, baby), is a way to get that F-91W look and feel but with a look that eschews the norm.

But who are 85 (and who does number 2 work for?!)?  Well, 85 is a Singapore-based microbrand started up as something of a side mission from their sister brand MakeGoodWatches, an Etsy selling account established in 2021, mainly known for modifying F-91Ws.

However, it was in 2025 when MakeGoodWatch founder Leonard decided that he’d had enough of the F-91W’s shortcomings.  What if, he mused, the watch had a dual time function and didnd’t need adjusting every time he got home from a trip?  What if it had a decent backlight?  This inspired the idea of making his own digital watch.  Something that tapped into the strengths of the F-91W, the universal appeal of that classic case shape – wearable by anyone – and its classic three-button operation.  Leonard gives all credit and kudos to Casio’s timeless timepiece, but even classics can be improved sometimes.

And that brings us to the GHOST, the debut watch by 85 Watches, and it’s clear (shut up, me) what the main difference between the GHOST and the F-91W is.  Sure, it has the same silhouette, the classic hexagonal footprint with nearly identical dimensions, but it’s obvious that 85 weren’t looking to stick any closer to the original design than that.

The GHOST gets its name from its transparent elements.  Inspired by the song ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot and its lyric “as long as I’m a ghost that you can’t see”, the idea for the GHOST watch with a clear case and faceplate.  No branding, no logos, no labelling.

Think about the F-91W for a second.  That tiny faceplate is covered with words.  Casio, F-91W, light, alarm, chronograph, mode, alarm, water resist and that big WR sign, just in case you wanted to know the abbreviation of ‘water resist.’  It’s arguably too much.  Too much faff, too much clutter.  The GHOST says ‘miss me with all that nonsense’ completely.

When you get the watch in your hand, that clarity really stands out (if something this stealthy can stand out).  The case is truly see-through.  No tint, just icy clarity.  Through it you can see the watch’s heart, the digital module, a small piece of white plastic.  Now, maybe they could have worked in a way to make that clear too, but I think that would have looked cheap.  Instead, you get a look that is closer to the Nothing Phone.  White and clear plastics, working in concert.

In real life, it just looks so clean and crispy.  Even down to the decision to remove the CRT television-style corner curves from the F-91W’s display and go for 90-degree squared-off ones.  We’re not about to start downplaying the Casio, but this looks nicer, to us at least.  Even the LCD border around the screen gives it an extra bit of sharpness.  It’s nice, but in a sort of retro-futuristic look.  You can imagine Ripley wearing one of these on the Nostromo.

To even identify this watch, you’ll need to look at the back, where you’ll see the digital font ‘85’ logo and tiny text giving out the rest of the details.  We recently reviewed the similar, but far more blood-splattered, Kill Count by Farr + Swit, which we love, and the GHOST has much cleaner engraving.

With its 35mm width and 8.9mm thickness, this is a small watch, comparable with the F-91W, which gives it a lot of usability.  Men and women (or men with skinny lady wrists like me), young or old, this watch just works (although anyone with particularly large wrists might find themselves wishing for a longer strap – something we hope that 85 end up catering for with later revisions of the watch, just to increase its appeal further).

That strap is also a big part of the watch’s overall look with its transparent resin construction.  You can see right through it, making it great for anyone with tattoos and less good if you’re a super-hairy wolf-person.  It’s really quite striking when you first see it, and it avoids looking cheap or gimmicky.  We think 85 were smart to stick to just one colour choice (say no to ‘colour way’), i.e. – no colour, because it keeps the look simple and simple is elegant.

The strap is also incredibly comfortable.  It’s a soft material that wraps softly around your wrist but feels durable at the same time.  If, like us, you think that smart watches are bollocks and that all the data they record is basically useless (tell me my V20 max when I’m dead, nerd), this makes a great gym watch thanks to its clean display, low profile case dimensions and its comfortable fit.

When the watch arrived here at Watch Country HQ, it came at the same time as Farr + Swit Kill Count and the Revelot Hexmariner, both of which required plenty of wrist time for review purposes and so the GHOST was getting rotated in and out of use but I’ve been wearing it now for the last week and damn, I’m bonding with it.

It’s just so perfectly understated.  It has that curiosity factor that you’d get from one of the nicer-coloured Casios, it weighs basically nothing at just 24g, it never catches or pinches, and it’s got all the pertinent information up front and nothing else.  You can wear it anywhere:  at work, on a run and in bed and it just becomes a part of you rather than feeling like something additional.  There’s no jingle-jangle which, here in the UK, is very, very important (don’t ask).

The functionality of the watch is great, too.  There’s nothing too advanced on there, this is just a digital watch after all, but it’s got everything we want.  The bottom-left button cycles through the watch’s main modes.  First up is your main display mode, which shows time, day and date (in a mm/dd format – something we’d love to be able to switch to the better UK format).  Here you can switch between 12 and 24 hour displays with the bottom-right button.  Holding the top-left button puts you into the adjust mode.

The other modes are Alarm, Stopwatch, Dual Time (which just shows the time but adjusted by you according to wherever you’ve travelled to) and a 24-hour countdown timer (if there’s a way to change the duration, we couldn’t figure it out, so we think it’s just one day).

The top-left button also gives you your illumination, and its here that the GHOST outperforms the F-91W completely.  Forget Casio’s dim, uneven LED glow.  The GHOST instead uses electroluminescence, which, according to 85 themselves, had one requirement:  be brighter than anything else on the market.

It’s quite something.  Firing it up inverts the screen, giving all the digits and that border a teal glow which shines brightly.  It’s also not constrained by the case, which really allows those photons to express themselves directly towards your retinas.  I don’t care how old you are, you’ll be pressing the button in bed.  Not because you need to know the time, but just because it’s SO. VERY. COOL.

And so that’s the story of the GHOST, and what struck us about the watch overall is how it’s somehow noticeable and discreet at the same time.  It’s got that double-take appeal to it.  Like, oh, a digital watch… wait, hang on a second.  Even now, a few weeks after receiving it, it still catches me out.  As if the watch is saying, ‘I’m here when you’re ready to take in all this sweet, sweet style.’

It doesn’t have bulk, colour, imagery or gimmicks, and it doesn’t need them.  It’s just a watch that takes the classical values and tweaks them, respecting the form but taking things forward in such a way that you can’t imagine how they could ever top it without spoiling things.  This is a watch with no fat on it – figuratively and literally.  It might not be the perfect watch, but it does what it sets out to do perfectly nonetheless, and for £30 (which currently includes free shipping – first orders only), you can’t really go wrong with it.

The ‘Ten Watch Box’ Verdict:  But will the GHOST be able to earn a place in our main watch box?  With our Revelot Hexmariner V3 currently heading back to the supplier for repair, or replacement, there’s definitely a space in the box for the GHOST.  However, we think it’ll end up rotating in and out with the Kill Count, just because they do such a similar job.  The GHOST is arguably more versatile though and isn’t a watch we’re ever planning to part with.