It took a different approach, offering a watch with a dual layer display so that you could see the time all the time but also save battery, while it might have made sense to launch a g shock watch at that time. Instead, it went with its hiker focused pro trek lineup, but finally, casio has launched a wear os powered g shock. So is it any good i’m cam bunton from pocketlint – and this is my review of the gsw h1000 catchy i know and while you’re here, if you could tap that, like button hit, subscribe and tap the notification bell, that would be marvelous now, if someone says the Word g shock, there’s a very good chance. You have a mental image of a large chunky round watch while it has other styles under the brand. This is arguably the classic g shock, look it’s hefty round and features those iconic shock absorbers protruding all the way around. The display ensuring that it’ll soak up any impact protecting the watch face, as is standard for pretty much every wear os watch now. The g shock has three physical buttons all on the right side of the watch, each with its own preset function, the middle as always launches the wear, os app view listing all installed. Apps. The top button is your start button. You press it to launch into an activity and the bottom button launches casio’s own function, interface, giving it a little bit of a different edge compared to other wear aware swatches.
Now, i have to say we weren’t particularly convinced by the design quality of the buttons they have quite a spongy quality to them, especially the middle button. So you don’t get the reassuring click you might crave, letting you know that you have indeed pressed the button and because the interface on screen doesn’t always respond instantly. That can be a little jarring to begin with. As for the other side of the case that features protruding elements that look like they could be buttons but aren’t. The central protrusion is the sensor for altitude and barometric pressure. The bottom is just a round plastic nipple with no function and the top one is the external charging port it’s magnetic and means you charge the watch, while it’s resting on its side, rather than resting on its underside, likely down to the latter being physically impossible. Thanks to the design of the strap, that literally cannot lay flat since the strap always springs upright. The strap is a nice change from the pro trek models, though those ones tended to be quite hard and plastic, whereas this is a lot more supple and flexible it’s. Strong and the double hole punches spread across most of the length of the strap but giving you lots of versatility and ensuring it’ll fit most wrists. There is only one gripping loop holding it in place there, and we often found this would slip down towards the clasp. Even with its protruding elements fitting into the strap holes, that means you might need to get used to that strap sticking out a bit at times.
The underside is quite a plain metal plate with a small protruding mound that features the optical sensor for heart rate monitoring, but the one feeling you do get from this watch design as a whole. Is that it’s really sturdy? Not only is it designed to absorb shock, but it’s, also water resistant to high levels. It can withstand pressures up to 20 bar, which roughly translates to around 200 meters. That should mean you’re easily able to take it swimming unless you go really really deep. On the whole it’s quite comfortable to wear, although not quite comfortable enough to want to wear it at night, it is a big chunky. Watch after all and we’d often find we’d want to take it off on hotter days or after a workout. When we were sweating at those points, we could definitely feel it was on our wrist. Now, when it comes to display tech, casio is really stuck to its guns. This is the same as the pro trek lines that came before it, in that it offers a main color display, as well as a monochrome digital display. The result is a watch that lets you see the time all the time without draining significant amounts of battery juice. Other watches tend to use their own oled based panel to have an always on feature, but this method usually means battery life is nowhere near as long as it should be. It’S also much easier to see when outdoors in bright daylight.
The primary screen, however isn’t so good in this instance, it seems relatively low contrast and low brightness it’s a customizable experience to a degree as well. The secondary monochrome lcd can have a black background and white digits or a white background, and black digits with the main color display. Casio will let you choose from three styles: digital analog and dual layer. The last of those essentially mimics the look of the monochrome digital panel on the main screen, so the appearance is that it seamlessly wakes up, of course, there’s a plethora of third party options available to download from the play store as well. Now the g shock move with casio’s, first attempt at giving you a fitness tracking, smart connected watch and when it first came out, it was limited to say the least. It was good for runners and no one else. Now the app supports more activities which are also built into the watch, so you can track more than just your running sessions. It’Ll do cycling. Mountain biking stand up, paddleboarding and even fishing among others. Now that said, i’m, a frequent runner, so naturally i took it running and, generally speaking, the tracking was pretty accurate. I took it for runs alongside my daily phoenix 6 just to see how the two compared and when it came to distance cadence pace and elevation. The two yielded very similar results as one example on a long, steady, easy run over 11 kilometers. The two watches were only about 50 meters apart in distance by the end.
Similarly, there was one or two meters difference in elevation and only a couple of seconds per kilometers difference when it came to calculated pace. It was only in the presentation of data during the run that i have any real complaints, instead of showing the distance traveled as a main graphic, or at least one of them. It shows you the time and the pace and the heart rate without any way to customize it. So you might keep looking at your watch hoping to see how far you’ve gone and you won’t know once back from the run, though it’s easy enough to sync with the smartphone app. Although we regularly had issues with connecting and had to switch bluetooth off and on again to reconnect in order to sync the activities now, one plus point here, however, is that you can link the casio move app to google fit and strava. If you want to so that your running data is stored in cross platform, apps and services, you’re, not just locked into casio system and that’s part of the joy of it being aware. Os watch as well, because you can download third party tracking apps directly onto your watch, so you can, for instance, decide to download strava directly to the watch and use that to track your run without needing casio system at all. But the one glaring emission feature wise for aware os watch is google pay because there’s no nfc on this watch so no contactless payments? It does, however, have an interesting capability called sensor overlay.
This records the data on your watch and is able to turn it into a graphic which you can then use on top of video or photos of the activity and for aware os watch battery life is decent too again, thanks to that dual layer display, rather than Barely scrape through two days, the g shock manages three days quite comfortably and if you just switch it into plain old, timepiece mode, it’ll go even longer because it’s essentially then just a digital watch during activity. We noticed that over a 90 minute outdoor session with heart rate and gps, it lost something like 18 rough estimating with a bit of rounding up. That suggests around 450 minutes or seven hours total, with a full battery that’s likely enough for most activities. Even a long mountain hike and more than enough for even the slowest competitors to complete a marathon so who’s, this watch for well essentially g shock lovers, who want a smart watch plus it’s a decent watch for tracking activities like running and walking it doesn’t do some Of the wear os things all that well, for instance, animations and response are a little slow and laggy plus. The main display is quite small and lacking in vibrancy, but it still does what it sets out to do most of the time with that secondary digital screen. It feels like you’re just wearing a proper digital g shock, but it’s hiding its smarts, underneath giving you that extra flexibility to get smartphone notifications, reply to messages and track your everyday fitness it’s, not the cheapest watch in the world.
But for the first time it is a smart g shock and that may be all it really ever needs to be i’ve been cam i’m at kambunton on social media.W64LAn5dtns
