Introducing the Casio GBA-800 Bluetooth Fitness Series!

Casio is known for its innovations, and specialisations. They've got diving watches, pilot watches, even the previous iteration of the GBA series (the GBA-400) specialised in music, by letting you control your playlist from your watch! With the GBA-800, they've moved on to fitness, and we had a chance to try these watches out. Ready to hear my thoughts? Let's get to it!

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Firstly, you're absolutely spoiled for choice. The GBA-800 has 6 different colours to choose from. All 6 of them are analogue/digital combos, with an extra-large case and screen. The coloured models all have a negative display (which is light numbers on a black background), while the white model as the regular display. The hour markers, as well as the hands are extra-large and thick, so you'll always be able to tell the time.

The bands themselves have a new band ring to prevent sliding, as well as more holes so you can adjust the band even better. The GBA-800's will fit pretty much anybody, and they're comfortable to wear.

Now let's get to the features. First up, if you've bought a combo watch before, you might be a bit cautious. Especially when you see “negative display.” Unlike the old combos though, both the analogue and digital displays have a dedicated super LED Light, making it easy to see both times at the press of a button. The hands and hour markers in the analogue display are also treated with a Neobrite solution, so even when the backlight switches off, the hands keep glowing.

As I mentioned at the start, this is a fitness watch, and a cool feature here is the step tracker. There's a 3-axis acceleration sensor, so you won't be able to cheat the system by just moving your arms and legs back and forward. It also lets you set a step goal, and keeps track of your progress. Finally, it gives you your step-counts in graph, so you can see whether you're ahead of your goal, or you need to get stepping.

Most fitness watches come with a lap counter, with a maximum of 100 laps. Like the GA-800 that inspired this series, the GBA-800 doubles that, and gives you 200 laps. So if you're an athlete, or just want to keep track of your running progress, this is a great feature.

Now, this is a Bluetooth watch, which means it has some tricjks up its sleeve that the original GA-800 didn't. First up, when you connect it to your phone, you can get it to automatically set the right time, so you never need to worry about changing the times again.

The step count graph that I talked about earlier, can also be imported straight to your phone, so after a few days you'll have a progress chart, and it can tell you which days you're slacking off (let's face it, sometimes we all slack off). You can also send the 200 lap records you've saved up straight to your phone.

Finally, the world time feature is upgraded by a huge margin. With other G-Shocks you get 30-50 cities at most, whereas here, you can see the time in over 300 cities. You can also easily swap times so if you travel, the default time will be whichever city you're in now.

Now, believe it or not, but there are quite a few other features I didn't get a chance to discuss, but if I did, this would be more like a book than a blog piece! Not to worry though, the GBA-800 series is coming out shortly, and you'll be able to familiarise yourselves with all of its cool features.

Until Next Time – Jimmy B.