Here is a watch I have just received. I had decided I wanted an activity tracker as I am going on a couple of holidays which will involve a lot of walking and I rarely carry a smart phone around with me.
It is the newly released GBA-800, I got the dark green model which I thought was the best looking of the bunch.
The face is pretty simple compared to most current G Shocks. What I like are the bright white hands set against the dark dial which means it is very easy to read the time in poor light.
The lower LCD can be set to show day, date and seconds or time and day or just seconds. It can also show the number of steps done that day.
The watch is an ‘activity’ watch with many useful functions. It is also a ‘smart’ watch and links to a phone four times a day, at times you can set, to update the current time. It obviously does this by Bluetooth once you have paired the watch to your phone.
Its ‘star’ function is a pedometer and steptracker. It records the number of steps you have taken up to one million, resetting at midnight. You can also set a step daily target and the watch will graph your progress to the target on the upper LCD. It works well in giving you a quick glimpse of your progress. The watch also graphs the number of steps taken each hour in the lower LCD. Pretty neat.
The watch has some really fancy timers and stopwatches. As well as the usual split times etc it will record up to 200 lap times all of which can be recalled with time and date in the ’Recall’ mode.
It also lets you set 10 ‘Target’ times of up to 24 hours, each settable by the second, an alarm sounds for 10 seconds when you reach the target time. You can use this function for instance if you go on a run and want to set times for certain way points so that you can see if you are matching the pace you have set for yourself for the run.
It has a very fancy countdown timer. You can set five different timers, which can auto repeat up to twenty times. This allows you to set interval training up. For instance you could set up say 60 seconds of a certain activity and then a 30 second rest period followed by 30 seconds of an intense activity and then a forty second rest. You can set this interval training in sets of up to twenty. Sounds complicated but it is actually easy to use once you have done it a couple of times. The watch sounds out the last five seconds of the countdown.
All these things, timers, steptracker etc can be set up on the phone using the app and just sent to the watch. You can do it all on the watch though and a phone and app is not required to use this watches functions.
There are some things just on the phone though, the app shows your steps and route on a map for that day and you can check your activity on any previous date. You record your vital statistics on the phone, height, weight, age etc so that your calorie usage can be calculated. The watch will attempt to update the phone with its data every half an hour. When the watch is connected, a Bluetooth icon shows in the upper LCD. The watch disconnects with the push of any button other than the light button.
The watch has a phone finder built in and will get the phone to play your choice of any music or sound you have loaded if you have mislaid it.
The watch has world time which can be set on the watch but you can use the app to have one of 300 world cities set and of course DST will always be set automatically when the watch updates its time via the phone. The app shows you your watch and its current mode whilst you are connected.
It has a normal alarm and hourly signal as well.
The watch has a great auto duel LED light system which lights up both the face of the watch and the LCDs separately. The bright white hands lets you see the time in really low light situations and they are lumed as well. Really impressed with the legibility of the watch, even the negative LCDs have good contrast.
Another good thing about the watch is that it will move the hands out of the way of the LCDs if you are using a function, also you can move the hands manually out of the way at any time with a quick push of a button and they will stay out of the way until you push the button again, The lower LCD shows ‘HND’ whilst this function is operating. Very useful and well thought out.
The band is a very soft urethane and has far more holes than usual G Shocks for finer adjustment. It also has a little nodule on the inside of the strap keeper meaning the strap keeper never slips, again something ‘G’ fans have been asking for for ages.
Having a link to a smart phone means the watch’s software can be updated, indeed the first thing the watch did, when I paired it up, was to update its software.
However, where this watch really scores is that it doesn’t need a phone or app, everything can be done on the watch, it can never be made obsolete by ever changing smart phone functionality. The watch will always work.
Also this watch just uses a normal battery, which Casio rate for two years, but they are renowned for being very conservative in these estimates. No having to charge every couple of days, no lugging around of chargers, no problem if there is no signal, the watch is quartz accurate and anyway can always update and transfer data later when a phone is available.
Actually it works with tablets as well I have the app loaded on a cheap tablet and it works quite well. Even the ‘phone finder’ function works on it!
The watch is no ‘monster’ either being smaller and lighter than most of Casio’s current line up of G Shocks, for instance it is smaller than the old DW-6900 by a fair margin.
So I think this is a really great G Shock from Casio, it does not appear to have had much impact yet but this is really a different way of implementing ‘smart’ activity functions in a watch and in good way. Who really wants to be trying to send text on a watch and one that has to have the phone present anyway?
This watch can stand alone but using a phone, when available, gives you absolute accuracy over the whole world and can make setting the watch easier and adds thing like travel mapping, calorie counting and the ability to keep and show data over the life of the watch. This is how it should be not making the watch almost entirely reliant on having a phone present and working.
This must be one of the best value watches out there. It is Casio getting back to what they are good at, great functionality at a great price and is a change from Casio’s direction of producing more ‘upmarket’ watches and charging a fair bit for them.
A few wrist shots.
Any thoughts out there?
Mitch
Last edited by Mitch; 23rd May 2018 at 10:57.
Cracking review, thank you for taking the time to compose and post it. I’ve been looking at these with curiosity recently but think your review may sway me towards one... I’ve recently acquired a couple of the larger gshock which I’d previously thought may be too big but have got on well with them so this should be fine!
Nice write-up and pictures - thanks for taking the time to do it.
I've been considering getting something like this for a while - another one to consider!
Great review and pictures and will be a great resource for potential buyers but for me that is probably the ugliest watch I have ever seen.
Very good review. Thanks
Great review, makes me feel bad that I bought one in the duty free for holiday 3 weeks ago. Wore it for a week and stuck it in the draw without even considering the app etc
Excellent review thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of this one, but now I am I've just ordered the grey one from a surf shop of all places. 20% off too with code MAY20
https://www.surfdome.com/g-shock_wat..._-_grey-310074
I had seen these on sale here and they are advertised as step counters. I couldn't really see many occasions when having the iPhone's built-in step count function duplicated would help. But there seems to be more to this one. 2 year battery life for one, and, as you say, most likely an extended life-cycle for the actual watch rather than landfill after a year or two. Could well be a gap in the market for these. Nice review, many thanks!
Nice write up and pics - thanks for taking the time to post that. Like TT's comments above, the step counter isn't a great hook to me but it seems like there's a bit more to this model than just that plus I like the look of it.
Hmm blue or grey? Tempted to try one but will try to resist.
Originally Posted by Craig
Very good, you can us your impressions when you have played around with it for a while.
Mitch
Shame it seems to be a negative display.
I do like the older casio bluetooth watc that scroll a text along the screen but sadly they are not supported anymore.
As I said, the watch does not seem to have caught much attention so far but I think it is one of the best cheap G Shocks Casio have issued in the last few years, a move back to their roots.
You can also sync the time at any time with just one push of button D, you do nit have to wait for the four times a day automatic syncing.
Mitch
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