The Casio GBD-200-1
The Casio GBD-200-1 and similar watches is a watch that counts steps and tracks runs. It communicates with the Casio Move app to provide you with a log of your steps, runs and progress. From what I gather it uses the phone to plot the GPS points of your run.
No HR tracking
I could use the term activity, rather than run but this watch assumes that all activities are runs, and there is no option to change this. This watch does not track heart rate or any other data. It provides simple information, for people who do not need much information. It does provide you with progress after a week of use but that’s with Vo2 data. For that you would need to import data from another device
Importing data from other devices is easy, if you do so manually. You can import more than one activity at once. They are added to the log. Over time you earn achievements for distance, training 30 times and more.
Battery lasts a year.
What differentiates this device from others is that it is not a conventional fitness tracker that your recharge every day, week or month. This is a watch that you wear and it counts your steps per day. It shows you how one day compares to the next. If you go running then it expects you to do so two times a week and will count steps and duration. It will then provide a map of the run in app, not on the watch.
Until this watch I tracked almost every sport I did, whether it was a walk, bike ride, sail, parapente, cycling or other. With this watch there is a limited battery life of one year, in theory. This means that if I use it like a sports tracker I will kill the battery much faster. On the flipside it could encourage me to track less. The routes are always the same, so step count is enough.
You Recycle Other Brands When the Battery Dies
Devices like the VivoSmart 5 are slightly cheaper but the battery lasts for 7 days before you need to recharge, and both fitbit and Garmin step counters have batteries that tend to die after a certain amount of use. This means that you’re happy with them for a year or two, but then the battery dies and you upgrade. This is great for Garmin and Fitbit, but not for the environment. With a Casio watch it’s easy to swap the battery at almost every watch shop around the world, since they have been around for so long.
Use Cases
I see two use cases for such watches. People who are brand new to fitness and activity tracking, who want to experiment with the functionality of such watches, and long distance hikers. The app is focused on people who are brand new to sports trackers, as is shown in the achievements and initial training plan. This is reinforced by the lack of heart rate tracking.
On the flipside I think that for long distance hikers this could be an interesting device to use, either in solitude, or as a backup. The way I see myself using this watch is as a step counter from day to day, and a running tracker, if I take up running which I doubt, with the Garmin Instinct Solar or Apple Watch series Four as proper trackers for cycling, running and new walking routes.
Feeling Obligated
I love tracking my activities but what I dislike about Suunto, Apple and Garmin is that they track you 24 hours a day and none of them communicate the data between each other, so you feel the need to wear all three. I hate that sensation. The casio provides a step counter and watch for normal times, and the other three watches can be used for various sporting activities, and stored when not in use. I feel that these watches have become too invasive, both in the data they collect and the compulsion I feel to have 24hr data.
And Finally
For a long time I thought Casio were cheap watches. As a child I loved them, and wore plenty of different types. As an adult it’s when I took up scuba diving that I wanted to wear a watch, and from that I played with various sports watches. Eventually I reached a peak, with the Spartan, and now I’m climbing back down, and playing with Casio watches once again. They’re simple, light, and their batteries last for years, not a day, a week or a month. Once you put them on you can forget about them. They are also a lot cheaper, You have a good selection from 29CHF up to 150 CHF or so.
