Brand lore tells of its now-celebrity creator Kikuo Ibe dropping watches out of windows during development of the first models. That includes the brand's own laboratory-like testing facilities, amusingly brutal trials on Japanese TV and a GP staffer once running one over with his car. G-Shocks will be subject to abuse like few other watches. What unites these seemingly disparate G-Shock communities is that all wrap their imaginations around these watches, and all demand unparalleled durability, functionality and style.ĬASIO How Tough Are G-Shocks, and How Are They Tested? Herein lies the dilemma of parsing the G-Shock collection: it appeals equally to a camouflage-clad soldier serving overseas as it does to the effete watchnerd in a New York City apartment or a 13-year-old anime junky in Tokyo’s suburbs. Two very different audiences, two very different watches. Also, the DW-6900-PT1 sold out almost immediately and is inevitably bound for nerd forums and eBay, where it'll go for multiples of the original price. The second is the powder-blue, $180 limited-edition DW-6900-PT1 collaboration with Hodinkee and musician John Mayer: it appears playful but is, like all G-Shocks, tough as nails. The first is the $800 Mudmaster from the Master of G series, an enormous battle-ready analog/digital hybrid badass with almost as much capability as your smartphone. Let’s contemplate the following two G-Shocks, just to get a taste of the breadth available. Casio makes enough G-Shocks to satisfy a ravenous collector community (up there with sneaker nerds), and Casio also caters to various professionals who need indestructible timepieces, military personnel who aren’t issued watches, athletes in training, outdoorsy folks, and even skaters and surfers and breakdancers. There’s no way around it: the G-Shock collection is vast, intricate, overwhelming and constantly changing. You will not find all models in any store or other online retailer at once, try as you might, and you very well might discover yet more models. You might visit a properly stocked G-Shock store only to realize that physically confronting the beast does nothing to tame it. In reality, it's tough to wrangle all of G-Shock's constantly evolving offerings into a coherent picture, but this guide should help you navigate your way to one (or 10) that suits you. Beyond that, Casio riffs endlessly with style and functionality, from resin-cased altimeter- and barometer-loaded models to precious-metal atomic-clock-referencing dual-time world travelers. It’s a start.Īlmost all G-Shocks will have a stopwatch, a countdown timer, a backlight and 200m of water resistance. The analog/digital divide is one way in which Casio cleaves its G-Shock offerings, so we have grouped this guide into three major categories: digital-only, analog/digital hybrids and all-analog. Then there are fully digital models, analog/digital hybrid displays and an increasing number of analog-only models, too. That helps simplify things… a little: the brand regularly updates existing models with more design changes than mere colors. The first thing to recognize is that many individual reference numbers are really just alternative colorways for many G-Shock models. Let’s carve up this beast of a lineup known as G-Shock, paring as we can along the way. What You Need to Know About Casio G-Shocks It includes the latest tech and durability specs, as well as a unique feature that allows you to hide the hour hand under the minute hand to avoid confusion and allow you to only focus on the minutes, which are most important when diving. This is the newer generation of the famous Frogman watch with its lopsided case, but with an all-analog display. Functionality: Dual time, tide data, concealing hour hand, solar charging, more. There’s also an argument to be made for an activity-oriented watch having real hands, as once you’re bouncing through the rapids on your kayak or dangling thousands of feet from a cliff, making out a digital display isn’t always so easy. There’s something about looking at a whole watch dial that offers a broader perspective on time, and this is certainly part of the analog allure. Analog-Digital Hybrid G-ShocksĪnalog/digital G-Shocks all have traditional watch hands, giving them at-a-glance legibility and a sense of time's cyclical nature that’s lacking on a fully digital display. Though recent Frogman watches have gone analog (see below), we much prefer the OG digital versions. It also has a strap long enough to go over a wetsuit, but be warned that it can be a bit too long for some wrists when you're not wearing a wetsuit. Though not a dive computer, it's rich in dive style and is one of the most iconic designs in the G-Shock catalog. Functionality: Standard feature set, tide graphs, 31 time zones, timers and more.Īll G-Shocks are rated to 2oom, but the Frogman is the rare dive-specific model.
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