Recently I decided to re-explore Casio watches like the ones I had as a child. In the process I found that they’re minimalist, but great. They tell you the time. They beep every hour if you want them to. They wake you up if you set the alarm at the desired time. Some of them last for ten years, or more.
I experimented with several models including the F 91 and the A168 series.
For years I have worn increasingly complex watches. I went from a Suunto Vector to a Suunto D9 via a Suunto Ambit 2-3 Spartan and more. Eventually I have been wearing a Garmin Instinct Solar and an Apple Watch SE.
For most of this time I was happy to wear increasingly advanced watches. I would change them every three to four years, or wait even longer. I was doing interesting sports so I settled on a single watch at a time.
For years I have worn Suunto, Garmin and Apple watches. During this time I have tracked hikes, climbing, scuba diving, snorkeling, swimming and more. Recently I felt the desire to wear a Casio watch as I used to do when I was a child.
Over the years these “watches” have given you live information about barometric pressure, altitude, depth, and other information but with time they gave you the chance to track what you were doing by GPS.
These four brands create watches. Casio creates rugged watches with batteries that last for a decade or more, and pair with mobile phones to track walks and more. Suunto and Garmin have fitness/sports trackers that measure activities, whether sailing, climbing, running, walking, cycling, scuba diving or more. Apple in contrast creates fragile, mediocre watches that cost as much as mid to high range watches and yet their battery lasts for one day, if you’re lucky.
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.
For 92 CHF you can buy the Casio GBD-800-1B from conrad via Galaxus and it will track you steps 24hrs a day and map your walks without you pressing a single button. This means that you can track your life, without thinking about it.
The problem with watches from the last five or so years is that they track steps, heart rate and more 24hrs a day, but need to be charged, and want to know what you’re doing.
If we wear a Suunto, Garmin, Apple watch or Fitbit the device wants us to wear it for sleep, for every step we take, every heart beat and more. At the end of the year we do get fitness summaries but related to what we ran, swam, cycled and possibly walked. That means that for 22 hours a day we are tracking our heart rate and more for nothing.
With fitness watches if we track walking and hiking there is a good chance that the end of year summary will ignore these activities.
Over the last week or two I decided to run and to swim. These are two sports that are easy to do if you have access either to a pool, or the right shoes. Swimming was in 14°c water for 17 and ten minutes. The first time my hands and feet were cold so I wore gloves. It’s a way of enjoying a different sport than usual. It’s a way of using different muscle groups too.
Over the last five and a half years I have tracked every walk that I have been on, and I have tracked about five and a half million steps per year. That’s a lot of steps and a lot of going around in clrcles. Going around in clrcles makes tracking walks with smart watches/gps watches less interesting. That’s probably why I have been distracted by Casio watches.
I haven’t been distracted by the 300-600 CHF watches.
With a friend we’ve been playing with a slow motion camera and here are two of the results.