> 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.

• bayindirh

  today at 9:31 AM

  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.

Yay for the heart rate, boo for the smartphone.

• argsnd

  today at 8:50 AM

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

  • mrweasel

    today at 8:59 AM

    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.

  • rebuilder

    today at 8:58 AM

    Sure it would, for heartrate-based training.

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...

• nunodonato

  today at 8:19 AM

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

• mpreda

  today at 7:27 AM

  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..

• cloudbonsai

  today at 7:55 AM

  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.

• kristjank

  today at 7:22 AM

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

• Markoff

  today at 9:08 AM

  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

• serf

  today at 7:45 AM

  36ish hours a charge w/ HR stuff enabled.

  • hobo_mark

    today at 7:51 AM

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

    • swiftcoder

      today at 8:07 AM

      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.

• today at 7:43 AM

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.

• nh43215rgb

  today at 9:32 AM

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

> 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.

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.

• ZiiS

  today at 8:44 AM

  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.

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.

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

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

• izivkov

  yesterday at 8:28 PM

  Have you tried this open-source app:

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

  • __jonas

    today at 9:26 AM

    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.

  • GetMeSoon

    today at 7:08 AM

    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

    • coldtea

      today at 9:04 AM

      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.

    • bux93

      today at 7:47 AM

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

    • smt88

      today at 7:22 AM

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

      • GetMeSoon

        today at 7:42 AM

        Not when it’s such a hassle

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

• ZiiS

  today at 8:50 AM

  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...

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 (:

• isolli

  today at 9:26 AM

  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.

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.

• nradov

  today at 8:44 AM

  Garmin watches indirectly measure respiration rate via HRV.

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

  • originalvichy

    today at 9:41 AM

    Cool!

• originalvichy

  today at 8:32 AM

  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.

  • roryirvine

    today at 10:15 AM

    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.

• i_love_retros

  today at 9:38 AM

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

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.