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The Casio G-Shock Tested to Destruction

written by A.Morgan - 5th Aug 2011

If you visit the G-Shock website, you’ll notice that the second tab on the menu bar is home to the word ‘toughness.’ Casio make big claims about the performance of the G-Shock, particularly with their ‘Triple 10’ development concept (ten metre fall resistance, ten bar water resistance and ten year battery life), but is it all just marketing spiel or is the G-Shock really one of the toughest watches ever made? Casio sent us a G-9000 Mudman to find out.

The first port of call was somewhere close by – the freezer. Simply putting it in didn’t seem a difficult enough test, so it was placed in a water-filled container first and left overnight. By the next day the water had frozen completely solid and had gone misty too, so there was no way of telling if the watch had survived. There were a few anxious faces as I chiselled away at the ice, revealing it bit by bit, and soon the top of the green case was visible. A bit more scraping and we could see the dial too, working completely as normal. It had survived test number one.

Still mostly encapsulated in a solid block of ice, the G seemed as if it was mocking our paltry attempt to put it to sleep, so, moments later, it found itself in a pan of rapidly boiling water. As the water began to boil more ferociously, the G tumbled head over heels in the churning mass, soon obscured by the growing cloud of steam. After enough time to hard boil an egg, the G was carefully extracted and laid out on the side. Again we waited, watching a small patch of condensation on the inside of the crystal slowing disappearing to finally reveal that the watch was in fact, dead.

I felt a bit guilty for the sudden haste in dunking the watch to its doom as I turned the carcass over in my hands, feeling the last of the lingering heat drain from the plastic. It was then that I noticed a small speck of black on the dial that grew as I watched it, spreading across the crystal like ink seeping into tissue paper. After a minute or two, the dial was completely back to normal, and ticking away as if it had merely been awoken from a deep slumber. Damn.

Ten metres doesn’t sound like too much, but it is in fact the height of two storeys, and you definitely wouldn’t want to fall that far. Perfect for the G then. One car park and a couple of flights of steps later, and the G is hanging precariously over the edge of a metal railing, moments away from being dropped. The all clear call was given and the watch plummeted towards the ground, slowly pirouetting as it built up speed. It hit the concrete floor with a loud crack, bounced once and settled a metre or so away from where it first hit. Upon inspection it hadn’t even got so much as a scratch.

By this point I was beginning to see things from Captain Ahab’s point of view – the G had become my Moby Dick, and I would go to any lengths to see it dead. That might be why I found myself hanging over the edge of a fifteen storey building with a mad look in my eyes, dangling the G in front of me by one end of the strap. Once gone, it seemed to fall forever, getting smaller and smaller until I could no longer see it. The team below gathered around it like ants whilst I endured the longest lift ride ever. ‘Did it survive?’ I asked once I was down. Thumbs up. Not entirely believing it, I crouched down to look for myself, and sure enough once again, the G had taken it in its stride. Time for things to get drastic.

The impact from a fall is one thing, but how about the pressure from two tonnes of pick-up truck? The owner laughed when we asked him, but when he realised we are serious, he agreed to do it. The G is lined up with the tyre, and the truck rolls slowly forward, the fat, black rubber covering it for a few seconds. Waiting expectantly on the other side, we watched as it reappeared, and signalled for the driver to stop. It seems ridiculous, but you can probably already guess what had happened to the watch – yep, that’s right – absolutely nothing.

Not ones to give up, nor ones to realise where to draw the line, a phone call to the Caterpillar dealer Finning later and we were in the car and on our way to what could only be the G’s final resting place. Huge yellow vehicles loomed over the wire mesh fence surrounding the yard, and as we donned our high-viz jackets and safety boots it began to dawn on me that perhaps this was becoming something of a vendetta. ‘Which one will we be using?’ I asked the manager, Chris Leach. ‘That one,’ he said, pointing to the largest vehicle there.

Six wheels, each the size of our photographer, held the twenty-five tonne articulated dump truck off the floor – this was a serious piece of equipment that could do some serious damage. The G was lined up in front of the gargantuan tyre and the dump truck was fired up, the eleven litre, 325bhp engine (that weighs over a tonne on its own) thundering into life. Its weight was so immense that, as it began to roll forward, it was possible to see the colossal three inch thick tread blocks compressing down to nothing. The comparatively tiny G was swallowed by the huge tyre, and we said a few words to commemorate its demise. No, of course we didn’t, because the thing was absolutely fine. We even had the truck run it over at speed to be sure, and still it continued to function.

The time had come to bring out the big guns. Literally. The G dangled from a sheet of fibreboard in the middle of a disused airfield, a Berreta twelve gauge shotgun pointed squarely at it. The ensuing bang was like being punched in the ears by John Coffey, as a cartridge full of ball bearings spewed out of the barrel and knocked the board the G was mounted to flat on its back. Lots of little holes were peppered all around the watch, but the watch itself looked more or less intact. Closer inspection revealed that the screen had crazed and was no longer functioning, but the overall damage was far less than what we thought it would have been. The G was technically dead, but it had put up one hell of a fight.

For good measure we reduced the distance between the gun and the board from ten metres to just five, and repeated the experiment. The G was blown clean through the board and out of the back, which meant for the next half hour we had to scour the airfield for the tiny fragments of its remains, which had been scattered as far as twenty metres away!

The little watch had performed admirably, far better than we could ever have imagined, taking the worst we could throw at it right up until the very end. I don’t think the word, ‘tough’ quite describes how durable the G-Shock really is – tough makes you think of a steak that is a little hard to chew, but this is something else altogether. So it’s with a certain fondness and a heavy heart that I pack up the little pieces of G-Shock to be sent back to Casio, along with the letter of apology for getting carried away and turning their loan watch into a pile of broken fragments. Sorry about that, Casio.

With thanks to Casio, Finning UK Ashford and Fox Property Ltd for their invaluable assistance