by The Casio G-Shock G-SQUAD line of watches are sports watches at heart, equipped with simple, effective training tools. Last year’s refresh of the range offered step counting and running pace tracking, calories burned and a special timer for interval training. Sometimes it’s more helpful to slow things down so you can focus on your watch.
Connecting to your phone to share some of those readings via Bluetooth, it was a nice activity tracker without all the noise associated with a smartwatch – plus it lasts seven years and is cheaper than most of the best smartwatches out there.
However, the G-Shock just got a lot smarter. Following the release of the GBD-H1000 series, which used Google’s Wear OS as a base, the new G-SQUAD GBD-H2000 (opens in new tab) The line uses Polar’s advanced suite of tracking technology, as the Finnish sports equipment company shares its fitness tracking algorithms with Casio for the first time.
The GBD-H2000 offers an optical heart rate sensor, built-in GPS functionality (awesome for a digital watch!) and built-in compass, gyroscope, altimeter, temperature sensor and accelerometer. In short, it can offer many of the training and GPS tracking services of a traditional smartwatch, but without the constant noise of apps and notifications.
It also removes a lot of extraneous features, giving you only what you need. It looks a lot cooler than your average fitness tracker with its rugged, shock-resistant carbon fiber case and features an eco-friendly band made from corn-based biomass plastic rather than silicon.
The watch offers approximately 16 hours of continuous training use with GPS and heart rate monitoring, as well as a long battery life of two months in watch mode with heart rate off. If you exercise regularly, expect to charge the watch once every three weeks or so, depending on how long you’re out in the sun.
No price has been officially announced for the US, UK and Australian territories, but the G-Central blog (opens in new tab) it says it will be available for $399 in the US, which is around £329 or AU$600.
Analysis: A rival to the Garmin Instinct Crossover
When I reviewed the Garmin Instinct Crossover in late December, I said it was the “smart Casio G-Shock of my dreams” loving its rugged adventure aesthetic and lack of smartwatch “noise” in the design. I also predicted a general move away from smartwatches being just another screen on our wrists, based on the amount of screenless wearable tech we saw at CES 2023.
Well, Caso G-Shock and Polar have proven me right. GPS is too useful for modern adventure watches without them, and Casio has seen this and used Polar’s trusted suite of GPS and fitness tracking algorithms in the classic rugged G-Shock chassis.
This is the Garmin Instinct Crossover’s real competition: an old fashioned digital activity watch from Casio masters that packs some new-school smarts thanks to its partnership with Polar. Watches like the Vantage V2 and Polar Pacer Pro prove the Finnish company’s fitness credentials, with heart rate and power metrics in particular giving Casio a solid foundation of smart technology.
When the The G-SQUAD and G-LIDE lines were refreshed last year, I said the resurgence might “make digital watches cool again.” Well, I think we’re here. We see Casios on the wrists of connoisseurs and featured in the style pages of GQ (opens in new tab). But what I really wanted was to avoid another black mirror in my life, a way to continue to improve my athletic performance without information overload. The Garmin Instinct Crossover has delivered and it looks like the GDR-2000 is about to do the same.
