The Casio G-Shock G-SQUAD range of watches are sports watches, equipped with simple and effective training tools. Last year's revamp to the line offered step counting and tracking of race pace, calories burned, and a dedicated timer for interval training. Sometimes it's more helpful to scale things down so you can focus on your watch.
By connecting to your phone to share some of those metrics over Bluetooth, it made for a nice activity tracker without all the noise associated with a smartwatch; Plus, it lasts for seven years and is cheaper than many of the best smartwatches.
However, G-Shock has gotten a lot smarter. Following the launch of the GBD-H1000 series, which used Google's Wear OS as its foundation, the new G-SQUAD GBD-H2000 lineup (opens in a new tab) uses Polar's advanced suite of tracking technologies, such as Finnish sports equipment company. is sharing its fitness tracking algorithms with Casio for the first time.
The GBD-H2000 offers an optical heart rate sensor, built-in GPS functionality (amazing for a digital watch!), and a built-in compass, gyroscope, altimeter, temperature sensor, and accelerometer. In short, it can offer many of the training and GPS tracking services of a traditional smartwatch, but without the constant noise of apps and notifications.
It also removes many superfluous features, giving you only what you need. It looks much cooler than your average fitness tracker with its impact-resistant carbon fiber casing and contains an eco-friendly band made from corn-based biomass plastic instead of silicone.
The watch offers approximately 16 hours of continuous use with GPS and heart rate monitoring, and a battery life of two months in watch mode with heart rate measurement disabled. If you exercise regularly, expect to charge the watch once every three weeks, depending on how long you're in the sun.
Pricing has yet to be officially announced for US, UK and AU territories, but the G-Central blog (opens in a new tab) reports that it will be available for €399 in the US, which is around €329 or AU€600.
Analysis: A competitor to the Garmin Instinct Crossover
When I reviewed the Garmin Instinct Crossover in late December, I called it the "smart Casio G-Shock of my dreams," loving the adventure's rugged aesthetic and lack of smartwatch "noise" in the design. I also predicted a general shift in smartwatches as another display on our wrists, based on the number of non-display wearables we saw at CES 2023.
There you have it, Caso G-Shock and Polar proved me right. GPS is too useful to live without in modern adventure watches, and Casio realized that and used Polar's renowned suite of GPS and fitness tracking algorithms in its G. Shock Classic rugged frame.
It's the true competitor to the Garmin Instinct Crossover: an old-school digital activity watch from the masters of Casio, hiding new-school smarts thanks to its partnership with Polar. Watches like the Vantage V2 and Polar Pacer Pro demonstrate the Finnish company's fitness credentials, with its heart rate and running power metrics in particular giving Casio a solid foundation of smart technology.
When the G-SQUAD and G-LIDE lines got a facelift last year, I said the revival could "make digital watches great again." Well, I think we're here. We see Casios on the wrists of trendsetters and appearing in the style pages of GQ(Opens in a new tab). But what I really wanted was to avoid another black mirror in my life, a way to continue to improve my athletic performance without overloading myself with information. The Garmin Instinct Crossover has been delivered and it looks like the GDR-2000 is about to follow suit.