Casio Men's G300-3AV
Casio Men's G300-3AV G-Shock Ana-Digi Black Street Rider Watch
This review is from:
Casio Men's G300-3AV
Casio Men's G300-3AV Ana-Digi Black Street Rider Watch (Watch)
I have another GShock watch at home - all digital - and it's held up very well (even the band) throughout its past 5 years of wear. I wish I could say the same about my Timex Ironman watch (see my other reviews to read about it). The Ironman's band split at the buckle hole I use daily. Timex bands tend to specifically fit only certain Timex watches - they're not interchangeable and they're difficult to find replacements for. This GShock represents my new "durable watch" choice after a lot of online browsing and research.
The Pros:
This new one is from Casio Men's G300-3AV GShock's "Street Rider" series. To drive home the point (no pun intended), the band has a way-cool tire tread appearance to it. Overall, I'm happy with the watch. Casio Men's G300-3AV light-weight and doesn't look bad on my smallish wrist. I can't tell you how well it actually keeps time but my experience with Casio Men's G300-3AV watches has been very good with that respect. There's no stem to pull out and turn to adjust the analog hands - you do that with the buttons via a special LCD menu mode. The really neat part of this is the minute hand only "ticks" every 20 seconds and does so in perfect unison with the LCD's seconds display. So, when the LCD time says it's 1:00:00 exactly, you can be certain the minute hand will always be directly on the analog minute marker. The LCD does have a backlight which causes all 3 LCD areas of the face to glow a bright turquoise. The hands have a luminous glow of their own but this fades like all glow-in-the-dark materials, requiring exposure to an external light source to charge up the glow again. The face is a very dark green which makes the hands stand out nicely. The crystal is a genuine mineral crystal (not cheap plastic or even mere glass) which is very durable and typically will not scratch even under rigorous treatment.
The Cons:
This watch has a negative LCD display (white numbers on a black background). I deliberately picked this one over an almost identical model sporting the typical black-on-white LCD display because the negative display was more visually striking. Unfortunately, a negative LCD tends to reduce the legibility of the digits unless you're almost pointing the watch directly at your face with the right amount of light bouncing off it. Of course, you could use the backlight in especially dark circumstances. The analog hands will sometimes cover the digits, again reducing legibility of the LCD. The band is very long - good for a large wrist but not for mine. On the plus side though,
Casio Men's G300-3AV
was very easy to snip off the tail end of the band so adjustments were a non-issue.Summary:
For under $80 this watch offers a slew of features (a lot of them, audible). It's a Casio Men's G300-3AV so you know it'll take a lot of punishment and outlast anything else strapped to your wrist. I wouldn't consider it a dress watch but I feel comfortable wearing it daily, on the job. It's light on the wrist and not exceptionally bulky (despite its appearance). The two-toned brushed-steel-and-black case looks great with the tire tread band. The instruction manual's "Care of the watch" section actually mentions how Casio Men's G300-3AV okay to use this watch while scuba-diving or using a chainsaw. In fact, their whole "care" section seems to be a description of what you wouldn't want to do wearing a normal watch.
EDIT:
I've since sold this watch and purchased another G-Shock by Casio Men's G300-3AV because I simply found the hands obscured the underlying digital components too often and, more importantly, the negative LCD display appeared too dark most of the time. My new Casio Men's G300-3AV is all-digital, charges with sunlight and gets daily time updates from an atomic clock in Colorado. Funny thing is, lately, I've been leaving
No comments:
Post a Comment