G-Shock Men's Quartz Watch with Black Dial Analogue - Digital Display and Black Resin Strap AWG-101-1AER

I needed a rugged watch for outdoor use and bought myself this for Christmas 2008, after watching the Channel 5 Gadget Show on G shock watches in general. I knew the negatives - poor manual, difficult to read smaller dials - BUT it is still a great watch. Sealed for life with solar batteries means durability, together with the tough water resistant mechanism. I like the comfortable "round fit" to the wrist, but it does mean it can never lay flat. Persevere with the manual and it becomes logical. I think it looks good. Loses a star for no second sweep hand.

This is a very good watch. Loads of functions, very tough and looks good.

The functions are very good (I dont need to cover them here) and the mix of analogue and digital is great.

However the lighting is provided by an LED on the bottom of the screen. It is great at night for reading the hands however you cannot see the digital displays at all (even though the manual says you can). I was not happy that I could not use most of the additional functions unless it was in daylight. I consider this to be a terrible design.

So I sent the watch back, shame.

Casio's G Shock AWG-101 is an analog model in the G Shock line of watches built with heavy use in mind with a case designed to protect against shock and damage, and with a healthy 200m depth rating. The watch offers Casio's 'Atomic Solar' technology, that is it is powered by a self contained solar panel in the face of the watch, and updates itself automatically from a range of transmitters around the world (UK, Germany, USA and two in Japan) broadcasting the atomic time signal. For telling the time the watch gives you hour/minute analog time and three digital 'eyes' - one displaying seconds, one the last used transmitter and the third with options including the time date or day, and also all of the watches extra functions including world time, stopwatch, alarm and countdown timer. So really you have all the basic functions of a normal Casio digital watch, with the extra build of a G Shock and the analog display.

I bought this watch as a second watch intended to be worn for 'rough and tumble' activities - camping, mountain biking, swimming, climbing, etc... Where I would rather not risk damaging a more expensive or easily damaged watch, and appreciate the extra build strength of the G Shock series, and for this I believe it is perfect - Basic timekeeping plus a few simple but handy extra features like the stopwatch and alarms and a construction more than capable to handle it.

As for any niggles about this watch? There are a few small ones: The negative (white text on a black display) digital readouts are great in daytime and look fantastic, but become hard to read in lesser lighting conditions (and are not illuminated with the LED light) but do look great and are more subtle than a standard display would be, so don't draw the eye when you only want the analog time. Also other use in off lighting is mixed, The hands and hour markers are lumed for darkness, but are not particularly bright when compared to a lot of others (I believe just mostly the small size of area with lume) which is made up for with an LED that will illuminate the hands so they can be read, this doesn't cover the digital eyes at all though, so in darkness they are pretty much useless. The one other problem I have is that the hands seem very talented at covering the digital readouts, both the hour and minute hands, so for periods of time they are pretty much unusable.
As a watch I feel is more designed as a simple analog watch with the digital pieces secondary this doesn't particularly bother me - I can read the time in all lighting conditions thanks to the LED, so the watch does all I really need of it, the digital parts being a handy extra and the negative display looks great and more subtle than a positive which I prefer for the time I am not using them. So while there are a few negatives here, I don't think they really impact on what I wanted of the watch - a way to tell the time while being a step up from a normal watch that I am not afraid to wear anywhere.

I guess for other people it is a tossup over what is most important in a watch for you, personally I feel that this is definitely an outdoors type piece, and I will continue to wear other (classier?) pieces for most of my everyday life when I am not out doing something active.