null

As a fan of smartwatches (I have 3 so far, soon to be 4), I’ve been waiting for someone to bring out an outdoorsy Android Wear, and I’m happy it’s from Casio.

As a motorcyclist, cylclist, runner, kayaker and taker-of-kids-to-the-park, I’ve been keeping an eye on the smartwatch game for a while, hoping a proper watch would come out sooner or later, and from Casio’s presentation at CES 2016, I was not left disappointed.

Dubbed the WSD-F10, you can tell this watch takes a lot of design cues from G-Shock, with its rugged look and screwed together case, this gives a premium feel, while being built to be tough. The 1.32-inch screen shines bright with a dual layer design, a colour TFT under a monochrome LCD panel, both 320x300 pixels, plenty enough on a small screen such as this. The watch automatically switches between the two screens depending on the conditions. If it's super bright wherever you are, the monochrome takes over, and you just get a glare-less time screen, press any of the buttons and the colour kicks back in for all the apps and watchfaces you've installed. The monochrome also deals with ambient mode, and if set to do so, you can use just the monochrome mode all the time to squeeze nearly a month out of the battery before need to reach for the somewhat oversized charger.

The “flat tyre” design of the screen is less noticeable than the Moto 360, but does serve a useful purpose as the ambient light sensor. The standard faces include an altimeter, putting the sensors on the left side of the watch to good use, though being Android Wear, there’s nothing to stop you switching them for any number of available and customizable replacement watch faces from the Google Play Store.

Straight out of the gate running Android Wear 5.1.1, with Casio’s own additions, this is a watch to be reckoned with. Super smooth and intuitive to use, the added features from Casio round this watch out beautifully. A press of the “Tool” button on the right brings up a raft of useful tools from Casio, such as compass direction, air pressure and altitude, sunrise and sunset times, tide graphs, and activity graphs -providing real-time information about changes in the natural environment and activity levels. The usefulness of Android Wear is arguable, but it is steadily gathering traction as more features are added and more apps add Wear functionality. If you've ever used Google Now, you'll find things are pretty similar, barring Casio's additions. Most interactions are controlled by swipes, so easy enough to get used to; notifications are handled in "cards" and when the card is tapped, you get a bit more info about the card. The Google Play Store has picked up nicely with the additions of cooking apps, a plethora of fitness apps and even games such as Niantic's Ingress coming to the small screen. With no shortage of apps and watch faces to choose from, mixed with the adventurous styling of the watch, any outdoor enthusiast is going to be right at home with the WSD-f10.

Rated 50m waterproof, and built to U.S. military standard MIL-STD-810G, this is maybe the toughest smartwatch to date, far surpassing my own LG G Watch R in durability. Weighing in at 93 grams, it's not as heavy as the 62mm x 56mm x 16mm casing makes it look, but, despite its size and styling, it's a well designed watch,and the soft silicone resin strap is wonderfully flexible, conforming perfectly to the shape of the wrist. I’d imagine this would be genuinely comfortable to wear day-in-day-out. Saying that, it's unlikely to replace your evening watch anyime soon, but for purpose, I wouldn't pick anything else. Besides the aforementioned touch screen,the buttons are concentrated to the right side and those 3 are finished in a non-slip texture so perfect for one-handed use, with gloves on. The single button on the front is a dedicated compass shortcut, taking you from whatever you were doing, to the rather detailed compass. Neat. 

The colour scheme is truly G-Shock, coming in olive green, orange, black, and deep red. The design is super tough and far outweighs some of the competition, with the added plus of it shipping with certain activity apps such as RunKeeper and ViewRanger out of the box, along with the Casio apps for trekking, cycling, and fishing.

In conclusion:

In a bit of a twist from regular Android Wear watches, Casio have tweaked Google’s operating system, and with what the watch is designed for, you can understand why.

Casio have created one of the best looking Android Wear watches going, a glorious answer to the bling of some of LG and Huawei’s offerings. Though the design may not be for everyone, this watch is the answer to the smartwatch-hungry adventurist.

- Adam