I want a tough watch!

So I have these two businesses, lugging around computers and tables that hold computers, and landscaping and doing a lot of watering in my drought prone area...and guess what?...I kill a lot of watches.

Then one day I start talking to my friend who deals with Rolex watches and he tells me that my twenty dollar watches I wear are total junk. I figure they tell time as long as I don't bump them hard or get them too wet. Knowing that I can't afford one of his Rolex diver watches, he mentions to me that G-Shocks are the toughest thing out there, even tougher than a good Rolex or Omega dive watch, and way cheaper.

At $130.00 dollars, I then go to the department store and I buy the best G-Shock they have in the glass case, the G-511 model which comes in either a black face or yellow face, and I choose the yellow one.

The first thing I notice, never having worn more than a twenty dollar watch is that the G-511 has a very heavy duty rubber/plastic strap and it makes it very obvious this thing is meant to get wet. I don't expect to go down to 200 meters in depth, but the watch takes my watering in my landscaping business without getting waterlogged or short circuited. Having four function push buttons instead of a screw down crown eliminates the chance of accidental leakage of water into the case.

Besides easy to read hands like a watch of old, the G-511 has four digital readouts which can display date, day, seconds, stopwatch, four alarms, and time zones for 24 cities around the world, each in a different time zone. Since I am in California, I set my time for LAX and check the digital readout with the clock at home. Being that there are hands, I have to use the function buttons to set the manual hands, which are quartz driven, to match the digital time I set in the LAX time zone. While this wasn't very hard, I did find it slightly annoying to have to set the time twice.

Sometimes when I am lifting heavy objects like computers or landscape stones, I inevitably slam my wrists against the ground or another hard object. Luckily, the G-Shock pictured above is made from stainless steel and adds further insurance by having two small horizontal bars across the glass face of the watch. After having the watch a year, I have not scratched the glass in any way.

A watch with the ability to go 200 meters in the water and withstand shock no other watch can handle does make this watch very thick and a little on the heavy side. I don't mind so much the weight but I do find myself bumping the watch into a lot of things due to it's thickness which is about the width of an index finger. I have seen one other watch, the expensive Panarei luxury watch, with such a thickness, but the G-511's size is not a factor when most people look for such a rugged watch.

Longtime owners of various G-Shock watches have claimed that their watches did not need a battery change for ten or more years and I figure inside of such a thick case, it's possible to store a fairly large battery for longevity.

When it is dark out, the watch lights up on its four digital displays and they are easy to read if I am indoors in a dark place during the day or anywhere at night. If it is during the day and it is getting dark and hard to read the manual hands, the digital display does not light up brightly enough to read. I wish Casio would have made the display light up as brightly as a Timex Indiglo.

One thing that this stainless steel watch has that the other all plastic G-Shock watches doesn't have is that it can actually look good with a suit on and not appear to be too utilitarian. Casio also makes this model with a metal strap for a slightly more formal look, while keeping its legendary durability.

There are watches tough enough for most people at a lower price point, but there are watches no more superior that cost upward of $300 dollars, so it's not the best value out there for the money, but it isn't bad if you want a watch which will last a long time and be able to take virtually any abuse you throw at it.

Four stars.