Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 REVIEW

The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 is a new Android
Wear smartwatch aimed at cyclists, fishers, and hikers. You can use it as a barometer and a compass, and even view tide charts on its unique dual-layer LCD that switches from color to monochrome to conserve power. But considering the target audience, it's extremely disappointing there's no built-in GPS or heart rate monitor, and much of the outdoor-centric functionality doen't work with iOS devices. Throw in a bulky, uncomfortable design and a sky-high $500 price tag, and the Smart Outdoor Watch becomes hard to recommend. If you're serious about tracking your outdoor activities, you're better off with the Editors' Choice Garmin Forerunner 735XT, which has a heart rate monitor, built-in GPS, and longer battery life.

Design, Display, and Setup

At 2.4 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and 2.9 ounces, the Outdoor Watch is huge. Other Android Wear watches, like the Motorola Moto 360 Sport(1.8 by 1.8 by 0.5 inches, 1.9 ounces) and the Huawei Watch (1.7 by 1.7 by 0.4 inches, 2.3 ounces), are significantly smaller and lighter. The 1-inch-thick strap is also big, bulky, and made of stiff, tough plastic that quickly becomes sweaty. My slight wrist never got used to it.

The plastic watch face comes in black, green, orange, or red, with stainless steel on the bottom and three buttons on the right: App, Function, and Tool. The App button is a shortcut to an Android Wear app of your choice. Function switches between display modes (more on those soon), and when held down it doubles as a shortcut to the list of Android Wear apps. The Tool button cycles through a set of tools, including an altimeter, a barometer, a compass, and sunrise/sunset/tide charts. The buttons are responsive, and especially useful if you're wearing gloves.

The 1.32-inch display uses an interesting design that places a monochrome LCD on top of a 320-by-300-pixel color screen. You can switch from the default color view to the always-on monochrome one, which shows the date and time, with a press of the Function button. That said, the screen is dull and highly reflective in direct sunlight, which is a major problem for a watch meant to be used outdoors. It also has the same "flat tire" effect—a black, empty space that cuts off the bottom of the display—as the Motorola Moto 360.

On the plus side, the Outdoor Watch meets military standard MSL-STD-810, making it waterproof up to 164 feet, as well as resistant to dust and shocks.

To use the watch, you need to download the free Android Wear app from the Apple App Store or Google Play on your smartphone, open it, and follow the simple on-screen setup instructions. I paired it with aSamsung Galaxy S6 in a few seconds. To make full use of the watch, though, you also need to download the Casio Moment Setter+ app, which is only available on Android. Moment Setter+ lets you customize the watch face and assign apps to the shortcut buttons on the right side of the watch. With an iPhone, you can't reassign the App or Tool buttons, and the use of several tools including Sunrise/Sunset, Tide Graph, and Fishing Time, is not supported.

Features and Performance

The Outdoor Watch has an accelerometer, an altimeter, a barometer, agyrometer, and a magnetometer (an electronic compass). You can view each sensor's data by clicking the aforementioned physical Tool button. Some of these functions worked properly in testing—the compass points true north, the sunset/sunrise and high/low tide times match results on Google, I found out that PCMag office is almost 200 feet above ground level, and all of the data is easy to understand on the watch face. But measuring distance while running and walking proved to be a waste of time—the numbers kept climbing even though I was standing still.

There is also no built-in GPS, which is a serious omission given the target audience. Without it, you can't accurately track metrics like distance traveled, or save important location data, like which trail you took or fishing coordinates. There is also no heart rate monitor, which is another big omission for the price.

As mentioned earlier, the dual-layer display can switch to a monochrome readout to save on battery life, but normal everyday use only provided me with a day's worth of power in testing. And when you switch to monochrome mode, all of your smartwatch functionality, including apps, push notifications, sensors, and the touch screen, are unavailable. On top of this, the watch uses a proprietary charging cable that has a very weak magnetic connection; even the slightest brush will disconnect it. It takes about two hours to reach a full charge.

Left to right: Garmin Forerunner 735XT, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch, Fitbit Blaze

Android Wear itself hasn't changed much. It still involves unintuitive flicking through vertical lists to get to apps, though Casio's shortcut buttons help improve navigation. Like on the Huawei Watch, clicking the middle button cycles through settings, contacts, and an app list. The watch comes preloaded with MyRadar, RunKeeper, and ViewRanger (an app that gives you hiking information like route distances). It also pushes notifications from email, social media, and texts to your wrist.

Conclusions

The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch has some useful features for a niche audience. If you want to find out how high up you are in the mountains with the altimeter, or check when the sun will set, you can do that (as long as you're an Android user). But a bulky design, a dull display, short battery life, and no GPS or heart rate are all big drawbacks for an outdoor watch, especially when the price is this high. We haven't reviewed it yet, but the $499.99 Garmin Fenix 3 offers the same basic range of functions, as well as built-in GPS, a heart rate monitor, push notifications, and five weeks of battery life. And though it lacks sensors like a barometer and a magnetometer, the Garmin Forerunner 735XT has built-in GPS and a heart rate monitor, making it a better choice for outdoor adventurers of all stripes.

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