A Review of the G-Shock GBD-H2000

Midori Sendō

15 May 2025 — 15 min read

I'm retiring the training watch that has been my loyal companion for the last two years: The G-Shock GBD-H2000. It didn't break and I didn't fall out of love with it. I actually got a new watch for the next stage of my adventures: the G-Shock DWH-5600. More on that later.

But hold up, another G-Shock? I could get an Apple Watch that does way more for the same price or spend up on a Garmin super tracker that the pros use. Why'd I even get the GBD-H2000 in the first place?

Truth is, I'm a nerd that grew up in the early 2000s. The GBD-H2000 reminded me of the Pip-Boy from the Fallout series. It looked like superhero transformation watches from Power Rangers and Kamen Rider. It was the real-world version of the Pokégear from Pokémon, the Ben 10 Omnitrix, the Digimon Digivice, the Medabots Medawatch,Viewtiful Joe's V-Watch, every gadget watch from James Bond, the Communicator Watch from Venture Bros...I could go on for a weird amount of time. But I'm done being ashamed.

I bought the G-Shock GBD-H2000 because it felt cool to me. Every day feels like an adventure, even if I am just going to Trader Joes or running on city-approved trails. There's the retro futuristic, stainless steel and bio-based resin case. Then the software: simple stuff like a stopwatch, timers, almanac, altimeter, barometer, compass and world time. But it also tracks your heart rate and training data like a videogame and analyzes it for you using specialized algorithms. It connects to satellites to record your trail runs, bike rides and outdoor swims. It'll tell you if you slept good, need to train more, measure your blood oxygen levels, do breathing exercises with you and it can be charged by the sun. The sun!

Two years of adventures with it have changed my life for the better. The most important thing I've learned is that less really is more. So it's time for a review. Ditch that Apple Watch for NPCs, quit fixating on Rolex bracelets and sell your overpriced Swiss timepieces to the next generation of finance bros. Join us in the land of rad.

Watch Review

GBD-H2000
Time Elasped714 Days
Workouts CompletedALOT
Purchase Price$400

About G-Shock

The G-Shock was born in 1983 from engineer Kikuo Ibe’s obsession with creating an unbreakable watch. After dropping a gift from his father and shattering it, Ibe set out to design a timepiece that could withstand extreme conditions without sacrificing accuracy. After hundreds of prototypes and field tests, his team at Casio unveiled the first G-Shock, the DW-5000C—a chunky digital watch that would go on to redefine durability and become a cult favorite among military personnel, athletes, and streetwear fans alike. The full story is incredible: check it out on the Casio website.

What started as a niche experiment in rugged reliability evolved into a global phenomenon, merging utility with style. G-Shock’s iconic toughness and ever-evolving design language continue to push boundaries, proving that resilience never goes out of fashion.

Flash forward to my childhood in 2000s New York City. G-Shock was the streetwear watch brand. Everyone rocked them. Pharrell, Spike Lee, Usher, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, John Mayer, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco, Jay-Z, on and on. A very dated list of people but you get the idea. It was for people at the top of the creative world and those on the come up. That trend continues today: J. Balvin, Rui Hachimura, A$AP FERG and even FC Barcelona have released G-Shock collabs. Central Cee, rap star rising out of the UK, wears a high-end watch on one wrist and a G-Shock on the other.

My Road to the GBD-H2000

Like most G-Shock freaks I bought a bad amount of watches because they looked cool and were relatively cheap. It's like catching Pokémon. Do I need ten watches that can be dropped from the roof of a building and survive the heat death of the universe? No, but like a lifted Bronco at Costco it's about the vibe.

I liked G-Shock but none of them could track workouts. I switched to smartwatches: first was the Pebble which was great but has since been absorbed by Fitbit, then Google, then gone. I had the Gen 2 Apple Watch for a while. Even though it's a beautifully crafted, well-engineered piece of wizardry, it was missing soul. And I wanted to disconnect from my phone, not have another pipeline to it on my wrist.

After tons of research on various smartwatches I considered my original love of G-Shock and visited their website on a whim. They recently released a new line of rugged fitness trackers, one of which was the GBD-H2000. It looked cool as hell, the promotional materials were on point it won the New York Product Design awards, which I had never heard of but that sounded pretty good. Marketing!

It was $500 at the time which didn't feel so good but I took a gamble and bought the G-Shock GBD-H2000 from the Casio website. A couple of weeks later she was home and the adventure began.

First Impressions

It was thinner and lighter than I expected. I've got little bird wrists and the size and shape still felt natural. It's chunky but not comically so like some G-Shocks that are used in the field.
It protrudes off of your wrist as much as an Apple Watch though the octagonal shape takes up more real estate across on your wrist. You couldn't wear this with a dress shirt but it ain't meant for that.
The display is a super crisp Memory-In-Pixel (MIP) display that is white text on a black background. It's legible at any time of day and night. You can set the backlight to last 1.5 seconds or 5 seconds, and you can have it automatically turn on when you rotate the watch face towards you.
There's no lag time, navigating through the different features is quick and responsive. The menu structure is logical and intuitive.
Buttons are big and easy to press down even while you're in motion. You can turn on vibrations for additional feedback each time you press a button.
You can't change out the straps as they're integrated with the watch. It's comfortable though and there's plenty of notches to find a comfortable fit.

Initial Setup

You can pair the watch to your phone using Bluetooth. I would recommend doing so for initial setup because the watch wants your height, age, weight and more to accurately analyze your workouts. It's easier to add all of that on a touch-screen. Plus, the phone app can push settings to your watch and pull workout data from it.

The Casio Watches App

The Casio Watches app is a mixed bag. To be fair Japanese culture has its own way of presenting information but the initial user experience comes off as busy. The Home tab is a list of ads for other G-Shock and Casio products.

The My Watch tab is where you want to be. Here you can register new watches to your account and if the watch is Bluetooth-enabled, it'll establish a connection. Based on your preferences the watch will periodically connect to the app to ensure time and data are synced. If you're into notifications, it can display incoming texts/calls/emails/calendar alerts, and reminders you can program from the Casio Watches app.

The amount of data in the app is solid. You'll navigate to the My Page tab for a list of every workout you've done with the watch plus your total steps per day. There's lots of numbers, graphs, tables and charts. Casio partnered with Polar, a legendary Swiss data analysis company, to make sure that they're tracking the right stuff and presenting good insights. That includes tracking your heart rate zones, stride length, and much more.

On Pairing and Unpairing the GBD-H2000

I paired the GBD-H2000 to my phone but eventually unpaired it. I've found that the Casio Watches app needs to be open 24/7, and if I closed it, my watch and the phone would harass me to reestablish the connection. Once you reconnect, it takes a while for data to upload and it has failed often enough for me to stop trying. I dealt with it for the first few months of ownership but it drove me up a wall.

I chose to live with local data even if it was limited. The tradeoff is that watch storage fills up over time and you'll have to periodically delete everything. The watch will tell you when storage is full: let it go or pair again to save what's stored on the watch. I use the watch for in-the-moment data and record every workout using Strava on my phone for long-term analysis.

Navigating the Watch

Your home screen is the time, date, step count and heart rate if you want. There are five preset home screens with varying levels of information so you'll find what works. I don't leave the heart rate monitor on, just during workouts and at night so my home screen has step count, date and time.

There's five buttons on the GBD-H2000. Similar layout to other G-Shocks but three buttons makes make it so much easier to navigate: Enter, Up and Down. For a lot of other G-Shocks you can only forward in through menus which means a lot of clicking to get to a particular function. With this, it's way easier. I can hit enter to access workouts, or if I hit up or down, it takes me to a long carousel of features (stopwatch, almanac, recovery score, barometer, etc.). More on that later.

Core Functions

If you hit the top-left or bottom-left buttons while you're on the homescreen, it'll take you to the main watch functions. Hit Enter button to select those functions. You can use the Casio Watches app to reorder these functions or hide any functions that you don't use frequently to tailor the watch just to your needs. I bolded the ones I used the most.

Cardio Status is great because it tells you if you're overtraining, detraining or maintaining. Once I started to run more frequently this became another way for me to quickly self-assess my progress.

Nightly Recharge is your sleep score. You set your bedtime in the app or watch, it'll start the Heart Rate monitor around then and track it until about an hour after you wake up. I found it was helpful because I usually drift off to sleep with my phone in hand and usually get up in the middle of the night once to let the dog out.

Activity Log is a list of your past workouts. You can click into each workout to get a ton of data: workout duration, heartrate max and average, cardio load, distance, pace, and energy used (total kJ and the split between carbs, fats and protein).

Breathing Exercises is cool in theory but even as someone that does breathing exercises and meditation every day, it felt awkward to use. You see a breathing bubble on the screen, you match your breathing to the bubble as it expands and contracts. The watch will flash GOOD or SLOW DOWN on the screen if you're not doing it right. I never grasped this feature properly.

The Altimeter, Barometer, Compass are cool features, I used them on random occasions and that was good enough. I'd be happy if my next watch had them, wouldn't miss them if they were gone though. The Almanac comes in clutch somewhat often, knowing when sunset is without screaming at Alexa is cool.

Heart Rate
Blood Oxygen Level
Breathing Exercises
Cardio Status
Life Log
Nightly Recharge
Activity Log
Almanac
Compass
Altimeter
Barometer
World Time
Timer
Stopwatch

Workout Functions

There's seven workouts available when you hit the Enter button on the left side of watch. Use the Up and Down buttons to navigate and hit Enter again to select that Activity. It doesn't start automatically, get yourself sorted and hit Enter again to start the workout.

Running
Biking
Walking
Gym Workout
Interval Timer
Pool Swimming
Open Water Swimming
Trail Running

If you select any of the outdoor activities that use GPS like Running, Cycling, or Open Water Swim, it'll take a minute or two to connect to space. If you're in a building, get outside. Once you're outside and moving, it'll eventually pick up the signal and let you know it's ready to rumble.

The accuracy of your activities is pretty good. On average I've noticed a .10-.20 mile difference between the GBD-H2000 and my phone/Strava. Sometimes there's only like a .05 mile spread, the watch always has more distance than Strava, but I've never seen it be more than .35 miles off. Point is, you might need to run a little further than your watch says. Though I don't pair watch and phone so the spread might be smaller for you. Accuracy is consistently better for biking.

When you end an Activity in the watch, you can Resume, Save or Discard it. After Saving the Activity, it'll give you a post-workout summary screen, add the workout to your Activity Log and update your Cardio Status on the watch. When you sync up with your phone again, it'll add your latest data to the My Page tab.

The watch can also automatically upload your runs to Strava. You have to link your Strava account through the Casio Watches app, so data goes Watch > Casio Watches > Strava. It's good that you only need to start one workout but because of the syncing thing, takes a little time for the record of your greatness to hit the internet.

G-Shock partnered with the fitness data analysis company Polar to refine tracking and data analysis that the watch offers. The depth of data is pretty good. It's meaningful data that you can learn from. Though I can admit I'll need a coach to make full use of it, the data helps.

Why Another G-Shock?

Short answer: the new one looks even cooler.

Long answer: I want to focus on running, strength training and yoga. I absolutely didn't need a new watch to do that but the streamlined simplicity of the DWH-5600 felt like an evolution of the GBD-H2000. To go back to my geeky references, the DWH-5600 feels like the season 2 upgrade. Sleeker, refined, entering a new era. An evolution of self in spirit and form.

I've been using the DWH-5600 for about a month now and while this one doesn't connect to satellite and I don't connect it to my phone, the spread between Strava and Watch is closer on average: a .10 mile difference on average so far. One of my latest runs had 3.53 miles on watch, 3.52 miles on Strava. I start each tracker within 30 seconds of the other so that is good to see.

I'm keeping the GBD-H2000 as my clock in my office and once I'm training for triathlons it'll be the daily driver. Or maybe I'll buy the Rangeman fitness tracker instead. That would totally be a season 3 upgrade.

I need mental help, but at least I've got more motivation to keep training.

Final Thoughts

I love this watch. It's been my companion since the very first chapter of this project. I would recommend this watch or any other G-Shock fitness trackers despite the Bluetooth annoyances that I experienced. I didn't have any epic stories to include here since I talk through it elsewhere on the site but she's been with me through everything. I've done two half marathons, several trail races, countless runs and bike rides, yoga sessions swims, lifting sessions and more. We've been in several countries together and across countless state lines dozens of times. This is the first G-Shock I've owned that I have used even remotely to its full potential. I'm trying to go even harder so let's see how much further we can evolve.

See you for the next review.

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