Casio - G-Shock GW300 Atomic Solar Watch Review

Though my watch is just called a G-Shock GW300, Casio, breaks down its watches even further with model numbers. Mine's a model 2608 if you're keeping track. Two other models are lumped under the GW300 heading, the 2638 and 2688. Those two have all the same functions but slightly different faces. There are also a black version with red trim and a blue-black version with blue trim.

Description: This is a digital watch with solar power and "atomic timekeeping." There's a solar cell embedded in the watch's face, which keeps the internal battery charged when exposed to light. That "atomic timekeeping" thing doesn't mean that it has a tiny nuclear reactor in it, it just means that it receives a signal from the US Naval Observatory's atomic clock to keep it set correctly. This particular watch is built like a Jeep thinks it is: shockproof and water-resistant to 200 meters

The watch case is large - an inch and a half across and about 3/8 inch thick, with a heavy "resin" band  The display numerals are large - about half an inch high, with smaller displays scattered around the dial. Five buttons control the functions; one on the front of the case turns on a backlight for the face.

Functions: The G-Shock GW300 has five display modes: local time, world time, alarms, recorded time, and stopwatch. Local time automatically displays day and date, can be set for 12- or 24-hour display, and it automatically updates for DST (you can turn that off if you're in a non-DST area). World Time displays the day and date for 24 time zones and 30 cities, letting you step forward or backward through thezones. There are four one-time alarms and a snooze alarm, plus an hourly beeper. The stopwatch mode runs up to twenty-four hours, recording at 1/100th second all the way. It also has capability for two split times. In recorder mode, you can record thirty different times - date and time of day.

Interesting Goodies: The backlight automatically stays on for one second, and can be set to turn on whenever the watch is rotated fifteen degrees from horizontal. A light-sensor keeps it from coming on and draining the battery if there's enough ambient light. There's a "fuel gauge" to let you see how fully the battery is charged. The time of day shows on the face in small numbers when the stopwatch is running; and there are, of course, a bunch icons showing whether alarms, chronographs, and such are enabled.

What's Missing: For unknown reasons, Casio left off a count-down timer and put in a record-time feature. I still haven't figured out why you'd want that, since the watch already has a timer.

The Good Features

• Incredibly accurate, with a periodic update from the Fort Collins Observatory (2000-mile limit)
• Solar-powered, with a battery-level indicator
• Four alarms, alarms that only sound once!
• Time of day displayed even while stopwatch is running
• Auto-backlight function

The Bad Features

• There's no countdown timer
• The watch has an irritating tendency to decide its battery is dead and reset itself to January 1, 2002.

Living with the GW300: This watch is tough as nails, although so much over-engineering means it's large and clunky. It keeps great time and is easy to use, with a fairly intuitive set of control buttons; however those same controls are a bit of a pain. I got this watch to use while running, but the control buttons are all recessed within the case - which makes them hard to push. Don't even bother trying to push those buttons while you're wearing gloves, even the light-weight cotton gloves I use to run. On top of that, I never knew how much I used the countdown timer until I didn't have one.

Overall: The G-Shock GW300 is a nice techie-looking watch with lots of features, which might come in handy for some users. However, I don't recommend this watch to anyone who needs a sports watch, unless you'll be standing around supervising the athletes instead of participating. The timer button is too hard to use when you're moving

Since it makes a lousy sports watch and I can't really trust it not to reset itself, I replaced it with a Timex. It's retired now, and I only keep it around to use when I'm doing messy work and still want to wear a watch.