I sold my G-SHOCKs

Both my G-SHOCKs are gone, and I'm totally okay with it.

Last week I sold off both my G-SHOCK watches. Both of them were DW-9052V models, and were originally bought used in mint condition. I wore one semi-regularly and it developed some light wear on the strap. The other I never wore, and bought it solely for the strap because it was cheaper to get the whole watch rather than buy a factory replacement.

After recently getting my WS1000H, I realized that I had no more need for the G-SHOCKs, so I posted them to eBay and they were shipped out a week later. I didn't make back what I originally bought them for, but in the end I only lost about 15 bucks, so that's not too bad.

My tumultuous experience with G-SHOCK watches

The DW-9052V was the only G-SHOCK I ever liked. Prior to that I briefly owned a DW5600E and a G9100 Gulfman, both of which were returned quickly. Why? Neither fit my wrist correctly...

...but it's not because of the watch case itself. It's the straps Casio uses.

My wrist gets along with nylon straps Casio makes such as the DW-9052V has. But where resin straps on a G-SHOCK are concerned, no frickin' way. They never fit right no matter what.

For the DW5600E in particular, there is the option of getting strap adapters to switch over to a NATO strap. Does it work? Yes. And it makes the watch fit much better. But I didn't want to put the money into it. It turns a $45 watch into $70. True, that's not a lot of money. But I didn't get it just based on principle. I shouldn't have to do that, so I didn't and just went with the DW-9052V instead.

There was another reason I was fine parting ways with the DW-9052V, and that was legibility issues. Pretty much all G-SHOCKs have this problem. The watch is made to be tough. In order to achieve that, the case has to be thick, and I understand that. The tradeoff is that the display has to be sunken down into the case and the LCD characters made smaller.

Digit display on most G-SHOCKs is small. For things other than the clock and date in icon form, they're almost unreadable. With the DW-9052V, the icons for alarm, hourly signal and 24-hour indicator can barely be seen unless staring at the dial directly in bright sunlight, or by using the night light.

How to get tough and legible?

The only way is to go with a high contrast analog display.

Only one G-SHOCK exists that almost gets it right, the G100-9CM:

Legibility is really good here. Black dial with contrasting indices and hands. It doesn't get any better than this. Unfortunately, the digital part is, of course, shrunken and small. But at least you can tell the time very easily at a glance.

The G100 is a "small" G-SHOCK with 49.6mm lug-to-lug, 47.8mm case size and 15.7mm thickness with a weight of 59g, but it's still tough all over, no question about it.

If I ever get another G-SHOCK, it will be a G100. For now, I'm sticking with my WS1000H. It's a runner's watch and not a tough watch, but it works great for me.

Published 2019 May 31