The hands of the new watches are worth a special look. Each uses a completely different design, but all tie into the new blue/violet theme. The blue/violet design on the 2100’s hands is shaped like radio antennae, the 700 goes for sharp triangles, following the hand shape, and the 900 chooses an almost rocket-ship graphic. They’re very different from anything else in the range and manage to make even some of the previously lairy Gs look a bit cardigan-and-slippers.
Typically, the three new Gs are as practical as they are striking. As you’d expect, they’re shock-resistant and will happily go down to 200m without any fuss. They’ve got enough alarms to make sure being late is strictly your own fault (you can snooze the GA700 and GA900 too, just for added jeopardy in the mornings) and you can time your resulting panic sprint to work with the 1/100 stopwatch. Once you’re there, you can count down your day with the 2100’s 24 countdown timer or drop heavy hints in meetings with the 700 and 900’s 1 hour timers. If those meetings get even more tedious than usual, you can happily scroll through the 31 time zones. Once you’ve set the calendar you’ll pretty much never need to again as it looks after leap years, 28 days in February, all that sort of stuff.
It’s worth taking a quick look at Kikuo Abe’s first DW500C alongside these new watches. You can see how Casio have come a very long way indeed since that first G, yet they’ve managed to retain the same ‘do what you want to me, I’ll be just fine’ ruggedness and design. Yes, this trio is very much about a fashion aesthetic but without being frivolous and still being an absolutely proper watch. G-Shock.