Traci Stewart
UPDATED REVIEW AT BOTTOM OF REVIEWCaution: Detailed review ahead.About 1 week of owning the watch so far. Did my research a LOT before buying. Saw the watch on another guy's wrist first, and my thoughts were, "wow, a G-shock that isn't ginormous." I have very tiny wrists, it's actually kind of pathetic since I consider myself pretty manly. They're about 6.2 inches in diameter, made to fit a baby-G, not a man-sized G shock. But this watch, man, it is an amazing size for my wrist! When I first received the watch, my initial though was "this looks really small.." but I tried it on, and lo and behold, it is nearly PERFECT for my wrist (still a little big, but honestly, all watches look big on my chicken wrists). The color is a matte black, silver for the buttons on the sides but they are almost hidden from view so it looks like a solid, black watch. The inner ring where it says "g shock" is stainless steel black, looks super snazzy, and the words "Gshock" and "Shock resist" are barely visible from a distance of a few feet (so you'll look cool, and people won't have to know you're out of high school and still wearing a g shock... what has our world come to?). The hour markers are NOT luminescent (they don't glow), but they are a cool looking gray/aqua color bordered by silver. The hands on the watch have a tiny bit of luminsecence on the tips, the rest of the hand is hollowed out. The word Gshock is also in silver/steel, and it also is shiny. Man, this watch looks a lot sleeker than the pictures on here!Now the controversial digital dials: There's three of them. The left shows the date, or can be switched to show digital time (12 hour or 24/military time for you cool kids) with the push of a button. Right hand shows the day (monday, tuesday, etc.) as well as in small letters "RCVD" which just tells you if you've received signal and synched with the radio tower for the day. So far, I've synced every single day between the hours of 12-4 AM, without fail. I live in NY, upstate, for reference, and place the watch on my window sill and it always synchs at night. One night I fell asleep with it on in my bed, and it STILL synched up, and I was a good 4-5 feet away from a window, so I don't know it might just be a good reception zone I live in. The bottom dial displays the seconds. Can I see them? Oh yeah. My eye sight is terrible, I wear glasses, but I see the dials well in almost all light, dull light or bright light. It's much easier in bright light, but still. If I had to knock anything off this watch, it's this: In darker lighting, like when it's dark outside and you have your back to a dull light, it is hard to see the dials. There, I said it. It's hard to see the dials in darker rooms. But NOT impossible. I've taken pics for reference in my dim lit room. If I had to change anything about the watch, yeah, I'd make the dials light up or something, but it's definitely NOT AS BAD AS OTHER PEOPLE WROTE IT IS! Maybe when I'm in my 60's I won't be able to see it? I don't know what the future holds for my eyes, but right now, I see the dials well. NOTE: They're blackout dials, meaning even in bright light, you just angle the watch slightly and the numbers become visible. It's actually kind of cool!The strap is a plastic/rubber/resin or whatever they call it, and I love it. It's awesome for when I'm playing basketball or mountain biking, or working at the hospital with my arms in someone's body fluids: Why? Because it doesn't soak any of that liquid up!! And I've showered with it plenty of times already, doesn't fog the inside up, doesn't leak water, or anything.Pros:-In my opinion, you can't get a classier looking G shock than this. I've never seen a G shock you can dress down AND up, but if I had to put money on one, I'd pick this.-It's a good size watch, much smaller than other shocks but the same size as many men's watches that people wear for formal occasions (for reference, look up Daniel Wellington watches in the men's size, it's just a tiny bit larger than that).-full of features, world times (a lot of different countries), synching up to make the time accurate daily, stopwatch (only goes up to 1 hr, beware if you're an athlete and need it to go past 1 hour), timer (goes up to 100 mins), 5 alarms, hourly alert, more I might be forgetting-It's really cool how the watch synchs up to your EXACT time, to the very nano second. Get the watch, synch it overnight, open up the official US timer for your region on your web browser, and see what I mean. Exact matchup, second for second.Although the cons list seems longer, i really nit picked with the cons just to let people know the honest truth. If anyone has more questions, message me, I'm happy to answer all and will get back within a day latest. Once again, I really reached for these cons, I just want it to be honest for everyone, but I truly am in love with this watch. That's why I gave it 5 stars: How do I feel about the watch? It's totally worth 5 stars.Cons:-Alarm and hourly ring tone is kind of soft. I can hear it perfectly when I'm awake, but I wouldn't set this for sleeping. Also, tone for alarm only goes off for 10 seconds. Usually on most watches it's 30 secs. The hourly alert is two short, soft beeps. It's perfect in meetings or classrooms because it's soft enough for most ppl to hear in the room, but not loud enough where it's offensive.-Dials are a little hard to see in DARK light. Otherwise, they're much easier to see than people complained about.-the light is one small orange LED at the bottom of the watch, lights up for 1.5-3 seconds depending on your preference, and only lights up the hands. You will NOT be able to see the dials, I don't care if your eyes are as good as Superman's. Do I care? No, because I rarely am in need of the stopwatch feature when it's pitch black outside and I can't see the dials!-Small for a G shock.. It's definitely a PRO for me, but some of the larger men or the high schoolers might want the gargantuan sized G shocks for their gorilla arms.-More G shocks don't come in this size or look this good. SERIOUSLY, IT'S A SEXY WATCH! Why isn't casio making more of these (baby-g doesn't count).Honestly, the only way this watch could be any more perfect is if they offered a metal strap instead of resin... I'd opt for the resin still because I need the watch for work and resin is easier to work with, but I'd get the metal strap separately for when I'm forced to dress up by my girlfriend for whatever events she deems necessary (btw, I wear this watch to all those events, I don't even care resin strap or not, it's too sexy).No offense meant to anyone with larger arms, I'm just having fun with the review! If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them!Photos: My baby wrists with the watch onThe watch how it looks with flash (notice how easily you see the dials and their contents?)The watch without flash (harder to see, but still visible in my extremely dim room's light.Sideways to show the silver buttonsUPDATE: I've had this watch for over a month now. I literally wear it everywhere. Running, weight lifting, biking, hiking, rock climbing, basketball (accidentally scratched some other guy when he tried to steal the ball, so I stopped wearing it for basketball), and after all these activities, I shower with it on to get the sweat, blood, and dirt off it (more sweat than blood and dirt). The watch face does NOT fog up. It's clear the entire time in the shower, no matter how hot the water is. It hasn't dropped below a full "High" charge since I got it and charged it my first day! I usually leave it in the window over night to catch the radio signal, but there's been days where I have been in bed, or left it on my desk away from a window, or once even INSIDE a movie theater packed with people (opening night of Avengers 2) and it STILL caught the radio signal and updated itself to exact time. When I go visit my parents in upstate NY, I leave it in the window overnight to update. We have a ton of trees, so on some nights it won't get the signal. That's fine, because when I'm out during the day, I can manually sync it up to the radio myself at any time. Speaking of which, this is how sync works for auto sync: between the hours of 12 AM - 6 AM, the watch will search for radio signal on the hour, every hour. The dials will be blinking up with various different words, and you can see the strength of the signal being received. If the signal is strong, you'll be synched within 4 minutes (Starts at 12:00, synched completely at 12:04). That's the normal, usually my watch will sync by 12:04, 1:04, or 2:04. Once in a while, with weaker signal, it'll take up to 7 minutes (12:07) before synced. If signal gets dropped, after a few seconds of being dropped completely, the watch will try again on the next hour. This cycle continues until 6 AM. If it doesn't sync all night, you can sync yourself in the daytime anytime you'd like, or wait till the next night to let it auto sync. Keeping it closer to the window definitely helps, but for some areas, isn't even necessary (like when I was inside a movie theater watching a movie and it synced).Honestly, amazing watch. Looks great, have gotten compliments already (which usually people don't give for g-shocks!), and I love the resin band. Speaking of the band, since I have tiny wrists, there is a bit of overhand with the strap when it's on my wrist. I figured out the other day that if you move the strap holder all the way up towards the watch face, it comes in contact with the little ridges on the strap. This was designed to LOCK the strap and the strap holder (the little rectangular thing on the strap that moves around, you know what I'm talking about, right?) in place so it won't move. This feature is incredible! It's so annoying to have a strap holder move around on you, making the end piece of the strap longer, increasing the chance of catching it when you're walking around on different objects, on your pants, shirts, etc. The strap holder, being lockable, locks the strap into place so it doesn't catch! Just move it up all the way to the ridges on the strap, and it locks the strap and strap holder in place!People say the dials are hard to see. I gotta say it again, they really aren't that bad. The lighting has to be God-awful for you to not see em. True, you have to tilt the watch a little in low lighting to see it, but it's perfectly fine when you do.After over a month, I'd give this watch 6 stars if I could! I think it's honestly the best purchase I've made to date on Amazon.com (using DiscountWatchStore!).

Michael Murphy
I was looking for a solar powered watch with analog hands, automatic light, and automatic updates from the atomic clock in Colorado. I had a G-SHOCK with a digital display for several years and wanted a newer one with analog hands. I work outside a decent amount and need something tough and dependable, but a little more grown up looking than my older G-SHOCK with digital only display.Pros: Battery life seems great during my 6 months of ownership. It arrived on medium charge (in September) and after a day or two of normal wear, it went up to high. During winter, with less time outside and being covered up by long sleeves or jackets, it dipped to medium a few times, but after a good day of outside work and the watch out past the cuff of my jacket, it goes back to high for the next few weeks. Reception seems very good, I typically wear it while sleeping and it shows a successful update in the morning (9 times out of 10), without special efforts like placing it on my window facing a certain direction or anything. Spilled some hot motor oil on it (was changing my oil and some dripped down my glove and onto the watch) so I ran it through the dishwasher with no signs of trouble. White hands on black face are easy to read at a glance, glow in the dark hands work well in dim situations, and orange backlight looks cool/works well in the dark. Alarms, countdown timers, world time mode all work fine, no issues. I was worried the size would be too big, like my Garmin GPS running watch or a Casio triple Sensor I used to have, but it's not too big at all, and I have relatively small wrists and hands. When I travel to another time zone, just hold down adjust for a few seconds, scroll east or west (using forward and reverse) until I see my new time zone listed, then hit adjust again to watch the hands zoom around the dial to the correct time. I guess I'm kind of a nerd but that's pretty cool to me.Cons: As others have stated, the data on the smaller "eyes" are tough to read at night. The orange light does a great job illuminating the hands, but everything else is black. That's fine with me, at night I really just want to see the time. If I really need the day/date and other features, I'll flash my phone screen on it.In Review: No longer have to worry about setting/updating the time, day, date, leap year, DST, any of that stuff. Based on previous experience with my last G-SHOCK and 6 months with this one, I won't have to worry about ever changing the battery. Price seems fair for a watch with this many features. If I lost this watch, I would buy another without hesitation.