Building a Beater Collection Pt 7

After learning a lot more about watches than I knew coming into this (in other words, after innocently thinking "I want a watch - what's out there?") I decided to explore the world of G-Shocks.

I had always kind of been aware of them but viewed them as big clunky garishly colored toys or as "let's play soldier" watches.

Lots of good YouTubers I mentioned in Pt 5 discussed some non-atrocious G-Shocks, and I was intrigued.

I love a product that is the exact essence of a core design idea. When something is simple, done well, and is just the epitome of its kind.

That can be a '52 Telecaster, a '64 ES-335, a '68 911, or the '22 MacBook Pro 16 I'm typing this on.

Those things tend to be very expensive.

The G-Shocks are not.

I was going to get the 5600, the simplest one, closest to the design of the original model. But then I found the 5610 which takes the classic core design and adds solar power and atomic clock sync. Which is just effing cool.

Afer owning the watch for a while, I have mixed thoughts.

On the one hand (har har), it is exactly as described. It's hyper accurate, even aside from syncing to satelllites. It has every function I need, and makes navigating between them easy. It is the very essence of one kind of approach to timekeeping. It's an amazing technical achievement, a cheap portable summary of humanity's progress. Gallileo would have killed for this.

On the other hand, it's kind of boring looking. No pizzazz. No élan. No personality. Kind of invisible on my wrist. It's an extremely awesome thing that doesn't look awesome in the slightest.

Which kind of circles back around to being cool.

I was wondering if it would look huge, but it fits my large wrists perfectly. Doesn't look big at all. Draws no attention to itself whatsoever.

Now, in the course of researching it, I found one reviewer who was sending it back for two reasons:

  1. It didn't always sync up for him unless he was outside. I have had no problems with this, even with the watch in my watch case in an inside room. I'm in Memphis, TN, so maybe I just have better "coverage" or whatever the satellite term would be. So no issue here.

  2. He said, and showed, that the stopwatch function did not show the current time at the top right, but rather the number of hours counted. And he needed to have the time displayed like his base 5600 did. I looked at mine, and:

Image

Mine has the current time displayed while using the stopwatch. I don't know if this is some submenu of a submenu setting, but mine was set this way out of the box.

Now, for all my stylistic second-guessing above, so far it has been cold and I have been mostly indoors.

But I love to ride my bicycle. I love to fish. I love to canoe.

I expect this watch will be my favorite summer companion.

Horses for courses.

Stay tuned for the next addition to my beater collection.

Previous:

https://www.watchcrunch.com/MrPsionic/posts/building-a-beater-collection-pt-6-29018

Next:

https://www.watchcrunch.com/MrPsionic/posts/building-a-beater-collection-pt-8-29143

Reply
·
Image
Image

I only got my 5610 a few weeks ago, and I agree, it’s a bit plain, so I have ordered the full metal mod kit in black, I’ve seen one done recently and its very impressive

·

I have no G shock in my connection yet. When I do it will be the 5610. A quietly spoken classic!

·

Your square shows the time while running functions because it's a newer version of the 5610, no obscure menu option or anything, pretty nifty! I'm enjoying this series of posts!