Casio launches G-Shock smartwatch with Wear OS and its costs more than your Apple Watch

Casio has launched its first G-Shock smartwatch with Wear OS – the G-Squad Pro GSW-H1000 – aimed at sports and outdoors fanatics.

We’ve seen smartwatches from Casio before. The Casio Pro-Trek range of Wear OS rugged smartwatches is now in its third generation and it also released the G-Shock Move GBD-1000 in 2020, which featured smart fitness tracking in a pared back proprietary OS.

The G-Squad Pro GSW-H1000 brings the toughness you’d expect from a G-Shock, with 200 meters water resistance, making it one of the most waterproof smartwatches on the market.

It mixes a titanium back plate with a ruggedized aluminium and urethane case. We’re lacking a few details on case size but it won’t be small – with dimensions rumored to be 65.6 x 56.3 x 19.5mm.

The Casio Pro-Trek is a beast of a smartwatch, and the GSW-H1000 looks no different. Casio has confirmed it will weigh 104g, which is frankly enormous – but that’s what G-Shock lovers expect.

It comes with a complete array of sensors, including GPS, which is joined by altitude, compass and gyrometer.

It also uses the dual display from the Casio Pro-Trek range, which blends a full color and low-res display to improve battery performance. The main display is a 1.32 inch Colour TFT LCD with a 320 x 300 resolution, which doesn’t match up to the brightest and boldest AMOLED smartwatch displays. This will switch off to reveal a Monotone LCD display for basic time keeping and data.

Casio hasn’t stated any estimates of battery life, or the processor on board – although the spec sheet does boast of “more than one month” of basic timekeeping if required. However, we’d be surprised if normal use battery life is more than two days, and will be keen to see estimates of GPS battery life. The Pro-Trek boasts 15 hours of GPS tracking.

But it’s not lacking in terms of sports smarts. There are 15 trackable activities and 24 indoor workout profiles, and it includes rep tracking as well as tagging weights lifted.

There’s VO2 Max for runners, as well as training progress data.

And Casio has put particular focus on road cycling, with distance, pace and time tracked by GPS, and then altitude and road gradient also added into the stats mix.

And there are also specific modes for surfing, sailing, kayaking and SUP, where tide graphs and mapping meet GPS data.

The device works with the G-Shock Move app, which shows activities and training analysis, as well as overlaying sensor data from the smartwatch on top of videos. That means you can put altitude, speed or heart rate on top of your gnarliest videos.

The Casio G-Squad Pro GSW-H1000 will be available in red, black and blue colors and will cost £500 when it launches in May.