Casio G-Shock GD-100-1AER Review

 

This will be a very short review because there's nothing to this Casio watch that you haven't seen before except it's in a bigger and more uncomfortable case.

It doesn't have exactly the same module as the normal Casio AE-1000W, but the functions are almost identical. This G-Shock has World Time, 5 alarms, a stopwatch, a timer, and... well, that's it really.

One major difference is that the useless mini-clock and world map of the AE-1000W and "Casio Royale" have been replaced by an even more useless animation for seconds and minutes (which flashes when you change modes too). The parts of the display that these new animations occupy is also covered by two silvery plastic circles which are so deep that all you see is shadow, thus rendering them unreadable unless you use the backlight.

The backlight, however, is where this watch has an advantage over some of the other Casios. You can set it to automatically come on with a flick of your wrist, which is nice, and it's actually okay with its two LED bulbs in the bottom corners. There's no EL or "Indiglo" system here, just old school LEDs, but they work well enough. You can set the screen to flash when the alarm goes off too to help you run down your batteries quicker.

Dimensions of the GD-100-1AER are roughly 51mm in diameter, a lug-to-lug of 54mm, and 18mm deep. It's a big chunky thing. The width of most of the bracelet is 22mm, but where it flares out to join the case is 28mm, and with silly little 16mm springbars underneath, it's not something you can easily change for anything much different without buying adaptors.

On a very personal level, I don't think I like this watch. It's a bit too big to be practical, it's not exactly comfortable (although if you're a big fat fatty, it might suit your wrist better than mine), the display seems far too tiny for a case this size, and the alarm is one of the quietest on any Casio that I've encountered so far.

I'm sure that it does all the G-Shock things that it claims to do such as survive being dropped onto carpet from a desk, or getting a bit wet from washing the dishes. I really don't know where else I might find a use for it at present since I don't have any velociraptors to train or tigers to wrestle.

People with less sedentary lifestyles than mine will probably be able to use one of these G-Shocks for all kinds of rugged outdoor adventures with no problems at all.