The GBD-800 Continued

The GBD-800 Continued is a step counting Casio with two serious flaws. The first of these flaws is that although the GPS from the phone can be used to map walks and other activities it has to be activated at the start of a walk and deactivated at the end of the walk. If you do not deactivate the GPS it will track the drive to and from the start of the walk, to the end of the walk. This isn’t ideal unless you’re on a multi-day hike.

The second flaw, and this is a real shame is that the watch does count every single step you take, and possibly more, but it doesn’t offload the data anywhere. It doesn’t connect to Google Fit, Apple Health or any other app. It will track your daily steps per day, and if you just want them on your watch and your phone then the watch is fine.

What frustrates me, after playing with the GBD-200 though, is that whereas the data from the GBD-200 is exported to G-Shock Move the G-shock connected app only allows you to export step information as an image with a map and a step count. There is no way to automatically get the data out of the app for use with other apps. With the GBD-200 and Move app you can transfer to Apple Health, Strava and Google fit.

I like the look and feel of this watch and I like to wear it but I still want my steps to be counted. For years now I have logged millions of steps so I don’t want to lose that data moving from device to device, unless that device sends the step number to another app. Out of pandemic I would not have any interest in step counts because I would be doing different activities with people, so I’d care about the activities, and people. As we’re in a pandemic I need different distractions. This is mine.

And Finally

When I bought the Garmin Instinct it cost 298 CHF. When I bought the Spartan it cost 473 CHF. The most expensive was the Apple watch Series 4 for 479 CHF. If Suunto had stuck to their own OS I would never have been curious about other brands and I would not flit from device to device once every two or three years. I would still be with a single brand. If we find a good cheap Casio alternative then we have a watch that lasts for years on a single battery, at a third to a quarter of the price. I see that as a win.