Confronted, he pointed to his rubberized wristband.

“It’s ripping apart,” he said.

Upon inspection, this proved true. But the model I saw on screen was no mere replacement. According to the review, the new $200 Casio G-Shock GW-400J came with features like a vibrating alarm, a countdown timer, a thermometer and a moon-phase indicator. To synchronize daily, it received radio waves transmitted by atomic clocks.

The only thing that stood between my husband and that watch was that Casio had released the GW-400J for sale only in Asia.