Casio G-Shock continues to expand its connected sports watch range, and has announced the GBA-900 series, following on from the GBA-800 released in 2018. The new model retains the Bluetooth connection and adds in a selection of new features plus a newly designed watch face, but most importantly keeps the reasonable price tag.
The GBA-900 isn’t a full fitness tracker like those from Fitbit, Honor, and Xiaomi, so don’t expect varied workout tracking or a heart rate sensor. Instead it’s aimed primarily at casual runners and has a feature set to suit them. Connect to G-Shock’s Move app on your phone and the watch will make use of its GPS to track distance, which with measuring running time also allows your pace to be calculated. There’s an automatic lap feature, and a standard step tracker.
Where the GBA-900 improves over the GBA-800 is with a new training intensity measurement, plus a daily goal to work towards. The training intensity has five stages to help show how hard you’re working out, and you can inject more motivation with a customizable daily goal too. The Bluetooth connection also makes it easier to adjust other watch features including the world time, and the stopwatch.
G-Shock’s also promising notifications from your phone, which should show up on the small display on the GBA-900’s analog-digital face. Despite the Bluetooth connection and these basic smartwatch/fitness band features, the GBA-900 doesn’t need charging and the standard battery inside should last for about two years before it needs replacing.
The updated design shares similarities with the all-digital GBD-100 and GBD-H1000 G-Shock sports watches, and is available in either black, white, red, or a black and purple combination. It’s a little slimmer and not quite as wide as the GBA-800, due to the use of G-Shock’s Hollow Core Guard case technology, which keeps the immense durability of a G-Shock without increasing size and weight.
Currently announced for the U.K. the GBA-900 costs 119 British pounds, which converts over to about $165, and we expect the watch to reach the U.S. in the near future. When it does the price will likely be around $150 or less, an estimate based on the GBA-800’s $120 price tag.
