Apart from earphones and music, I have no other greater fascination for tech than the tech found in Watches. I have been attached to watches since I was 2 years old. They have been the only consistent piece of tech in my whole life. Nothing else has ever held my attention in this physical world for objects and tech like watches. I have my very expensive watches, like my IWC Pilot and I have my kick arounds like my Seiko 007. In between I have my tough, go anywhere and do anything without fear of damage watches, like my G-shock. In fact G-shocks are my most purchased watch brand of all time followed by my Seiko’s.
And just when I thought it was safe to come out into the world and not want another watch, “ExerciseME”… a Youtuber, posted a video of this watch, the GD350-1b. He showed it being hit, dropped and pressed in all kinds of good and horrible ways and yet the unit never stopped and looked amazing afterward. The first thing that stood out while watching that video was the green negative display. First out I love negative displays but like most people my only complaint was the visibility they had under certain light conditions. And most of the time those watches also had very small display digits in the watch face that made it even more difficult. Enter the 350-1b. This one in fact has a amazing display with perfect green tent and great visible fonts that were large enough to see comfortable in any angle or condition. And if you needed visibility at night, of course you had the the light button like all G-shocks.
The next thing that stood out that really made me watch the video over and over again was the shape and the way it stood out on the wrist. Yes, a lot of G-shocks have similar shapes but not quite exactly like this. It’s stands off the wrist better than any other of my g-shocks and the band wraps around your wrist perfectly and comfortably, better than any G-shock prior that I had. And then I found out why. G-shock was smart enough to place a wrist guard under the watch to give it the proper lift and spacing on your wrist.
It’s not the first time they have done this and I’m sure there are others out there that carry this same addition but it’s my first time having it on any G-shock that I ‘ve owned. And now that I have it, I’m not going back to any thing else from g-shock that doesn’t have this. It’s a little marvel in my opinion. It gives the wearing more a sense of presence on their wrist. And on top of that keeps it from moving out of place once placed on the wrist.
However, with all that said, the biggest and easiest feature that exists that is so useful is the dedicated button for the timer. Something so simply and yet so useful and the biggest mystery as to why it was not available for any other of their watches before now. No more having to leave the mode you are in to start a timer. You can just hit that button, and the timer just starts. This comes in handy so many times throughout the week for me. It’s probably the most used function and feature on the watch beside the time and toughness, and you wouldn’t have thought it would have made that big of difference, but it does.
And then there is a vibration. It’s my first Gshock to have a vib alert, and i absolutely adore this function. No more needed beeping or scroll beeps …you now can replace all your alerts to only vibration. The vibration is not a cheap vibration motor. It’s one of good force and balance. It’s feels strong and not hollow or cheap. This adds to a sense of quality and uniqueness.
Overall I think this Gd 350-1b is possibly the best G-shock you can get for the money($120). It’s also a great stealth watch and military watch with one of the best negative displays you can ask for. And with a great battery life of 5 years on this model, the need for solar isn’t really felt. If there is something I don’t like it would be reset of the watch light auto feature. It basically resets itself after 5 or 6 hours and then you have to activate it again. I don’t think this is a good concept at all. When I tilt my wrist, I aspect that the light should come on but too many times it doesn’t and I have to manually activate it or restart the auto light tilt function again. You should, at the very least be able to turn off this feature of resetting it and to my knowledge this is not the way the watch works. So it’s not perfect but still the amount of great things it does do doesn’t get pushed to the side because of the lack of consistent tilt feature.
Tech-N-Things 