First G-SHOCK with a heart rate monitor, also featuring Smartphone Link | Hacker News Reader

First G-SHOCK with a heart rate monitor, also featuring Smartphone Link

gshock.casio.com

43 pointsluispa58 comments

Nah, this is not the first G-Shock with an HRM. This is only the first in the "G-LIDE" series designed for surfers which usually has a tide graph. But there have been Wear OS G-Shocks and G-Move watches with HRM in the past.

This. I was confused because I have definitely seen HR monitor casio watch years(10+?) before.

I don't understand Casio watches. I know that aesthetics are highly subjective but, outside of retro nostalgia, does anyone actually enjoy looking at this thing on their wrist?

The massive plastic bezel shouting PROTECTION, G-SHOCK, G-LIDE, random text on the display like SOLAR POWERED, HEART RATE, START-STOP, SHOCK RESIST, WATER RESIST 20BAR, TIDE GRAPH, besides the permanent function labels, all strike me as childish at best, not something an adult would wear unironically.

It’s fashion. Don’t try to understand it.

They release collabs all the time with streetwear brands. They’ve released watches with PAC Man, stranger things, haribo gummies, Toyota, Honda, etc.

Chunky digital watches aren’t my thing either but Casio has carved out a very nice niche for themselves. They can essentially keep releasing the same designs with various colors and materials for decades.

And I do appreciate a solid, durable and accurate dumb watch sometimes. I have a couple analog/digital G-shocks that look very nice.

Personally I don’t understand the market for very expensive watches that are fragile, less accurate, need constant maintenance and look like nothing special for many thousands of dollars. To each their own.

I wear them. Sometimes it’s just fun to have a blocky, overly decorated thing on your wrist. Mostly I wear one for the utility I.e I’m doing something stupid where I might get hurt or wet or both and I really need to know the time.

They’re fun and functional. Childish? I hope that’s something that will never entirely fade in me. Pretending to adult all the time is exhausting

How's the battery life on these Casios with fancy features?

My ideal smart (dumb) watch has step/heart/sleep tracking synced to my phone, no other connected features (especially no notifications), and a ~month of battery life. Currently that only satisfied by a Withings Scan Watch or a few Garmin models with the notifications disabled...

Take a look at the Amazfit NEO. I use it with all the notifications off.

My ideal watch also has: mobile voice & data connection (via eSim), speaker and microphone, camera.

Those in addition to what it already has: 1 month battery life, HR and SpO2 tracking, flashlight.

Also, blood glocose and BHB monitoring would be nice.

And I didn't mention the software..

36ish hours a charge w/ HR stuff enabled.

Yet, my 10+ years old pebble 2 HR lasts a week, and the new pebble time 2 claims up to a month.

Yeah, 36 hours is honestly pretty disappointing. The old Withings ScanWatch easily ran >2 weeks with HR and notifications enabled, I'd have expected similar performance from the Casio.

It seems that the battery lasts 35 hours with heart rate tracking, 1 month with no HR, and 11 months with power saving.

    Run Time

    Using activity functions (heart rate): Approx. 35 hours max. 
    Using in watch mode with heart rate measurement OFF: Approx. 1 month
    Using with power-saving function ON: Approx. 11 months

I'm not sure how well the "solar charging" feature works, though. It's surprising that it does not last longer than Fitbit or Garmin.

Garmin Instinct 3 Solar, very close to 30 days for me. YMMV depending on how much sun you get

Amazfit Bip has you covered, you can disable notifications, you can buy used one for <20USD and they still last one month + they are perfectly readable in sunlight thanks to MIP display, I'm on my 3rd now

there is nothing better since Amazfit Bip, Casio came close, but they are too bulky

Very poor. Hardly lasts a week with step tracking and heart rate enabled. Like someone else mentioned, go for a Garmin instinct 2 or 3 solar. My 2 Solar lasts more than 30 days on a full charge.

Yay for the heart rate, boo for the smartphone.

I can’t imagine a standalone heart rate monitor would be very useful without logging to a smartphone

Sure it would, for heartrate-based training.

You could dump it to some website or an app on your computer, but that feels like much the same. For me it depends on the implementation. It the watch continuously push data to the phone, then yes, BUUUH!

What I'd love is a fitness track, without a subscription, that sync data with HealthKit whenever my phone is within reach, but buffers it, if it can't find the phone nearby. It's the assumption that my phone will always be with me when I workout or take a walk that triggers the "BUH" from me.

I'd also love for this device to not be a watch, because that limits my choice in which watch I can wear.

You can use a Polar watch if that's what you're into - I used a Polar Pacer Pro for a while that you can sync to a computer periodically, or just use it offline.

It sounds like you are describing a Garmin watch.

It uses an app to sync with Apple health but will happily run offline for a week until you can sync it.

There are also heart rate bands you wear around their chests since you mention non-watches. I am not sure if those will work without another device to sync with though.

Meanwhile, I wish Casio had more power-saving magic to bring to something GPS based rather than yet another fitness tracker. Don't really need/want HR monitoring for hiking, but do care about position, elevation, tracking, and navigation functions on the watch itself.

I guess the reality is that this really isn't a "watch" anymore and Casio knowing how to make very low power, solar charging watches doesn't extend to computing and GPS.

> Use USB charging for the heart rate monitor, step tracker and notifications. Time display is powered by solar charging alone when the battery runs low.

I believe it's pretty smart. Keep the core functions intact when the battery goes flat.

ProTrek series pioneered this "power stages" feature back in the day. The watch selectively powers down capabilities to keep core functions going for much longer.

looks neat, but this would stop my buy:

""" Use USB charging for the heart rate monitor, step tracker and notifications. Time display is powered by solar charging alone when the battery runs low. """

I have a gshock already (GM-B2100D-1A) and I love it - I especially love that it should never be opened, always just works, and it looks ok too (:

I think it's nice that the watch falls back to effectively unlimited watch-mode instead of shutting down completely because the heart-rate tracker ate up all the battery.

> smartphone pairing enables automatic time correction

I like how they're advertising this shitty feature that's much more cumbersome than what their watches have now, namely https://gshock.casio.com/europe/technology/radio/

More like, automatic time correction is the best reason we found for mandating smartphone pairing and we hope you won't remember there's a better solution.

Also, 35 days that the battery lasts is 1/10 of a year, compared to 10 years that radio-synced watches have, so two orders of magnitude less. Fuck off with smartphone pairing, Casio.

edit: 35 hours, lol, so more like three orders of magnitude less.

It's super cool and I love G Shock in general but the Casio app is straight up awful.

Have you tried this open-source app:

https://github.com/izivkov/gshock-smart-sync-webapp

A web app i have to host on my own, use workaround apps to connect to it vs a clunky casio app that just works? I’ll go with clunky here

I mean... this is Hacker News. A lot of the audience would be excited about an self-hosted alternative.

Not when it’s such a hassle

I use this app on android : https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.avmedia.gshockGoogleSync...

You make it sound like rocket science or huge bother.

If you're a hacker/dev/tech nerd, that's trivial. You do similar things twice before breakfast without thinking about it.

You can use the app without hosting it yourself:

http://gshock.avmedia.org

Thanks for sharing this! I'm also looking for an alternative to the official app, since having to log in with an account and accepting a privacy policy every time I want to change the time on my watch is pretty ridiculous – unfortunately I think this doesn't quite fit my use case as usually I'll want to sync the time when I go to a different country, and I'll normally only have my iPhone with me, which won't support WebBluetooth. But this tool might be a starting point to fork and build a capacitor app with that can run on the phone I suppose.

Have you seen what vibe-coded slop it is? It's WILD.

https://github.com/izivkov/CasioGShockSmartSync/activity

You linked to the Android app there, not the experimental webapp linked above – I'm wondering what gave you that idea though? Those commit messages look pretty human to me, don't think an LLM would ever just commit 'WIP' or 'code cleanup', it's also 4 years old, before the height of vibe coding.

I can imagine the author may have used an LLM for this webapp version of it though

It is hard to reverse-engineer the Casio protocol by vibe-coding. Have you tried it?

Casio/G-SHOCK, one of the few brands which I think could plausibly stretch/apply itself into more tech areas than it currently does. Wearables, re-entering the market for ruggedised android phones, etc.

They are well positioned for wearables certainly; but a phone play would be much too risky. Practically they would end up re-casing an existing phone which would never feel G-SHOCK.

You should google their gshock ring. It’s a mini Casio watch. Same style. Hilarious

I still have my G-Shock from the late 80's. It has a crappy light, a quiet alarm, and limited functionality.

But it's damn near bullet proof and I change the battery every few years.

I have a G-Lide and I love it for the tide stuff and general toughness. I have Bluetooth disabled though, I want the battery to last like a normal non-smart watch.

Uhm the caption isn't remotely correct? Casio has had a G-Shock with heart rate monitor and smartphone link for years now. This is the first G-Lide series watch with these features however.

I want this in the classic F-77W or F-91W shell. Has this been already done neatly?

The HRM sensors are too big and need too big batteries. The popular ones even shun bluetooth to preserve battery though this feels more possible to me.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-wa...

It's a cool novelty but as a sports+tech+watch enthusiast (I guess which makes me the ideal target market for it), it doesn't speak to me. It's far too chunky at 17mm (that's 0.66 inches) and the fact I would need to charge a "legacy" watch has no appeal to me.

First G-shock G-LIDE*

Waiting for a watch that can measure respiratory rate.

Is that even possible with medial grade wrist devices? Apple Watches can perform it only during sleep which makes sense. It seems like a difficult problem to solve without a chest strap, or just measuring during sleep.

The only other alternative I can think of is a screen strap (some companies make those screenless ones, Polar, Whoop) around the bicep, as it’s relatively close to the shoulder and chest areas which gently move with our breath.

Garmin measures "photoplethysmography-derived respiration" (using the optical HR sensor). Error rates are under 1 breath per minute during sleep or at rest but rises during exercise, up to 4 bpm above the lactate threshold.

Impedance pneumography is more consistently accurate, but requires a chest (not bicep) strap.

Garmin watches indirectly measure respiration rate via HRV.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=2yEgS0Pax53UDqUH7q4WC6

Cool!

You need a smart watch to tell you you are breathing?

Do you observe your breathing rate 24/7 accurately?

Yes my heart does

I'm happily rocking a 1997 DW-6900S-2V.

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