When it comes to the hard wearing outdoors, choosing a watch that is going to do you justice can be a tricky thing. In my opinion, there are so many pretenders out there claiming to be the best G-Shocks for hiking.
As a kid with dreams of being Action Man and hitting the trail looking for adventure in the Australian bush needed a watch that looked the part.
Sadly, reliability wasn’t built in to these $10 knock offs, and they couldn’t take much of a fall or exposure to rain for any period. A big part of the problem was that I was all of 10 years old, with little to no pocket money or capacity to make long term choices.
Fast forward 30 years (wow, that makes me sound old) and I’m marginally better at picking quality items now, if I do say so myself. Having moved through the earlier models of the 1990s I found that my Casio DW5600E-1 lasted the best part of 19 years.
From there I progressed in 2016 on to the DW5600PM-1 where I was sold on the marble polarized coating. This beauty still works well after years of being on long hikes and in many different countries. These days, I’m getting a lot of enjoyment in seeing my nephew use it with my choice to upgrade again.
Both of those DW5600’s proved to be so much better than the 2 days I got out a dodgy $10 local market knock off for sure, even at the considerably higher price point for the time. But, bringing things into the current day, I find that I can’t look past the GPR-B1000-1JR.
As a timepiece, I firmly believe that this is one of the best G-Shocks for hiking. The tipple sensor and GPS are what really sold me on this unit. Being able to know that when I turn to it, it will be functioning exactly as needed. A handy little add on is the ability to wirelessly and solar charge, which is crucial for some of the places I find myself in.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this handles the Himalaya in a couple of years once travel opens up again. Being able to rely on the altitude and compass functionality while hiking through Annapurna is going to be something else.
The affectionally known “Master of G” may not be to your liking, but I can assure you that there is a much better selection of options for 2021 than I have seen rolled out in a long time.
My nephew has found the GGB100-1A and has his hopes set on that for Christmas. He says that it is because it is the Mudmaster, but I know that it is really because he thinks that it looks cool, and he’s got a thing for orange. Either way, the GGB100-1A is probably going to surprise him one morning in about 6 months time, if you catch my drift.
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