After testing a Casio G-Shock Mudman last year, my eyes were opened to the possibility of using a very robust watch to track my daily activity, sleep, and outdoor workouts with a GPS receiver. Casio recently released its latest generation of Master of G-Land Rangeman G-Shock watches. And I’ve had one of them on my wrist for over a month.
The main takeaways from the Casio G-Shock Rangeman watch
- The Casio G-Shock Rangeman is available in yellow and black for €500.
- The watch features GPS, heart rate tracking, smartphone connectivity, and Strava syncing, all in a rugged G-Shock body.
- It is relatively expensive and the stopwatch only has a one second increment.
As is G-Shock tradition, this is a rather large, bulky watch designed to withstand shock. I was sent the bright yellow model to test and it feels as snappy and imposing on my wrist as I expected. Casio also offers a black model with yellow highlights, if yellow is too flashy for you…
The new Rangeman can be used as a primary GPS sports watch, with support for running, trail running, walking, trekking, pool swimming, open water swimming, cycling , gym workouts and other activities. For example, I use the gym training mode to track my rowing sessions. Each workout type has several settings that you can customize based on your experience, which I like.
You can now sync the same data with Strava and Apple Health
With last year’s G-Shock model, I noted that GPS data was captured and stored only in the Casio Watches smartphone app, which limited the reporting you could do and how you could save and save. share this data elsewhere.
The Casio Watches app has since been updated and you can now sync the same data with Strava and Apple Health. From what I’ve seen, the data sent to Apple Health is limited, but Strava users will appreciate having access to all of their workouts to check trends and progress.
Matthew Miller/ZDNET
The G-Shock Rangeman supports notifications for incoming calls, emails, social media messages, calendar notifications, and reminders. You won’t receive all the details in these notifications, but it’s a quick way to sort through your communications and make the decision whether or not to grab your smartphone in the moment.
Menus and widgets
I wore the Rangeman to track my sleep and the results were close to those of other smartwatches. The watch also supports up to four daily alarms and a smart alarm with snooze function. The smart alarm activates when the watch detects that you are in your lightest phase of sleep, usually near your normal wake-up time. You can choose for this alarm to start between 15 minutes and 60 minutes before this time.
The G-Shock app is rich in statistics. Matthew Miller/ZDNET
The soft urethane strap fits comfortably and looks great, with a few labels marked on the top (mud resistance, heart rate sensor, …). The strap is also textured, making it easy to adjust, even with wet hands. If you want a watch with strong colors and visual identity, the G-Shock Rangeman may be what you need.
Five large buttons are mounted on the durable bio-resin housing. The top and bottom left buttons allow you to scroll through the watch’s various menus and widgets. A long press on the top button launches the settings to customize the watch according to your preferences. The upper right button turns on the LED light and the lower right button goes back one level in the watch navigation.
Matthew Miller/ZDNET
The mode button displays the time, day and date, desired time (38 time zones), heart rate, compass, altimeter, barometer, almanac (sunlight hours and of the moon), the tide graph and much more. Polar, yes the Polar which makes its own GPS sports watches, takes care of evaluating cardio load, nighttime recovery, running index and other measurements.
With my marine salvage engineer hat on, knowing the tides where I am is vital information. So I like that I can easily access the tide graphs on this watch, which supports about 3,300 global points for those tides.
Purchasing advice for the Casio G-Shock Rangeman watch
The Casio G-Shock Rangeman watch fits my wrist well and I love its bold yellow color. Despite its size, it only weighs 92 grams and is therefore not too heavy on my wrist.
The GPS tracking is very close to that of my other GPS sports watches and it offers most of the features of a classic GPS sports watch but with its own style, design and sturdy construction.
This product was mainly designed for G-Shock fans who want to use it as their primary sports GPS watch.
At $500, there are competing GPS sports watches from Garmin, Coros, Polar and other manufacturers, but none have both the look and build of a G-Shock.
Source: “ZDNet.com”