Product Review: Casio Carbon Core G-Shock

Up until last few years, I ignored the Casio G-Shock watches. I didn’t think they were particularly good looking, and I didn’t need a watch that was protected against high g forces any more than I needed a summer cold. Then something happened. I met King Kong.  Seriously.  King Kong on a motorcycle.  Kong rode with us on the Western America Adventure Ride here in the US and he’s done several rides (some solo) across China.  On my ride across China, my good buddy King Kong wore a G-Shock and he loved the thing.

Kong’s Casio was living a tough life. The fact that Kong liked the G-Shock got my attention, and a short time later I purchased my first one. Then came another, and now, a third.

This third one is the Carbon Core Guard GA2000, which is a mouthful. It was a gift to me from my sister Eileen, which made it even more special.  It is even more resistant to shock than a regular Casio G watch as a result of its carbon fiber reinforced structure and a new design monolithic band, which further encapsulates the movement. Okay, I get it, but the regular G-Shock timepieces are already pretty tough. The added protection might be meaningless from my personal survivability perspective, considering that if it gets subjected to g forces it’s going to happen while I’m wearing it, and the old design would probably survive those kind of shocks better than yours truly. My guess is that if this one ever gets close to feeling shock levels that threaten its existence I would be toast, and if that’s the case, hey, who cares if the watch is still ticking?  No, the features that endear this one to me are much more practical, and truth be told, I don’t fully understand all of them yet. There’s more to the show than I can talk about, but I can talk about the ones that matter to me.

For starters, the Casio Carbon Core GA 2000 is a good-looking watch. I like the colors and the style, I like the analog hands and digital display, and I like the skeletonized minute and hour hands.  The yellow accents on a black watch work for me. I just think it looks good. If yellow doesn’t float your boat, though, Casio offers this watch in several other color themes.

The folks who tell you size doesn’t matter?  Don’t listen to them.  I need to be able to read the thing, and with a watch this size, that’s no problem.    The G-Shock is a big watch, but it’s not too big.

Next up is the world time capability. I travel overseas from time to time and it’s nice to be able to check the current time in Singapore or Chongqing by clicking a button on my watch without having to try to remember the time difference. To me, this is an important feature.

This G-Shock has timer and stopwatch features. These were important to me when I was a jogger and a serious bicycle rider; today, not so much.  For you younger guys, if you need these capabilities, they’re there.  My watch is also equipped with an alarm feature.  I’m sort of retired now and it doesn’t matter when I get up in the morning, but old habits die hard and I’m usually making coffee by 5:00 a.m. every day.  I don’t need an alarm to tell me to get up at that time; I just do.  For you poor guys who still work for a living, if you need an alarm, you get it with this watch.

This G-Shock is comfortable and it’s waterproof. I wear a watch 24/7, and this one is so comfortable I forget I have it on.  I wear my watch in the shower just because I don’t want to bother with taking it off. Sometimes on a motorcycle I get caught in the rain.  None of that’s a problem for this watch; it’s good to go underwater at depths way deeper than I ever will find myself.

There’s another feature that’s a very big deal to me, and that’s the light. This watch doesn’t have luminous hands, but it has a light that let’s you see the time in the dark. That light is good enough that when I need to get up in the middle of the night (you older guys will understand what I’m talking about), it’s sufficient to illuminate the path to el cuarto de baño.  (It’s funny how what’s important changes when you get older.)

Oh, and one more thing:  My watch keeps perfect time.  I checked it against the www.time.gov website (the official US timekeeping site) when I got the watch, and I checked it again several weeks later.   It’s perfect.  Right to the second.

The Casio Carbon Core Guard watch carries an MSRP of $130, but the street price is usually under a hundred bucks, and that’s a good deal.