One of the devices that got our attention amongst the reports from the recently concluded CES 2016 was the Casio WSD-F10 Smartwatch. We gave always been looking forward to having a smartwatch than can be used in the outdoors and at milsim events as most of the smartwatches out in the market do not exactly fit the bill, including the Apple iWatch. With Casio, which has a history of making some of the toughest and high-tech watches in the world, then we finally have a smartwatch that we can trust to toughen it out with us in the field.

Casio is no stranger to creating “smart” watches for decades and with their G-Shock line of tough and sensor-filled watches, it is the most logical thing that company would try its hands on Android Wear. Casio is already familiar with Android, having developed the tough Casio G'zOne Commando smartphone years back.

The Casio WSD-F10 is water resistant up to 50 metres and thus can be used in water activities (except swimming). According to G-Central, it meets the MIL-STD-810G standard: drop, random vibration, humidity, solar-radiation, non-operating altitude, operating altitude, non-operating high temperature, non-operating low temperature, temperature shock, and icing freezing rain.

Unlike other Android Wear smartwatches, which have 1 button, the WSD-F10 has three to allow the use of Casio’s own custom apps apart from the apps that can be used with Android Wear.

Since it uses Android Wear smartwatch, the WSD-F10 is meant to work with a smartphone. This means theres is no built-in GPS in the WSD-F10 as it will use the GPS of the smartphone. But the watch has a plethora of sensors: air pressure sensor for altitude and weather forecasting, gyrometer, accelerometer, and a compass. It is also an activity tracker, as it can be used with Runkeeper. A feature seen in the G’zOne Commando, the ability to display sunrise/sunset, and tides, is also in the WSD-F10.

There are pre-installed apps in the WSD-F10 aside from Runkeeper, is ViewRange for navigation, altitude and waypoints; Yamap for trekking; MyRadar for weather and Casio Moment Setter + that handles timing activities and alerts.

One big problem with smartwatches is the atrocious battery life. To skirt around this, Casio installed two displays: an LCD color and LCD monochrome. The monochrome display does the timekeeping to save on power and when information needs to be displayed, then it’s the function of the color display. If just using the LCD monochrome, the battery will last a whole month.

As for connectivity, it uses Wifi and Bluetooth. Call and message notifications and other standard fare Android Wear apps can work and installed on the WSD-F10.  Casio also has some custom watch faces for it and I would rather suggest that you stick to the watch faces the company releases as other third party watch faces might not properly run on the WSD-F10, especially with the need to use all the sensors built-in the smartwatch.

The Casio WSD-F10 is expected to be released in Japan in March 2016 while in North America it will be in April 2016.  Price is at US$500 and models available will be WSD-F10GN (green), WSD-F10RG (orange), WSD-F10BK (black), and WSD-F10RD (red).