Field watch vs G-Shock: scratches and weight against impact, mud and sensors

Verdict

Specs side by side

Scratches vs impact

This is the whole argument and everything else is detail. Sapphire is dramatically harder than the mineral crystal Casio fits to every G-Shock on this site, so a field watch stays clear through years of desks, walls and gravel. But hardness and toughness are different properties: sapphire resists abrasion and chips under a sharp blow, while mineral hazes and survives. A G-Shock also does something no field watch attempts, which is to hold the crystal inside a raised resin bezel so that the impact never reaches it. Our sapphire vs Gorilla Glass page works through the material science; the practical version is that the G-Shock is protecting a cheap crystal and the field watch is exposing an expensive one.

Weight and thickness

The Bertucci is 59.5 g and 11 mm thick on a 40 mm titanium case. The Marathon GPQ is a 34 mm composite case 11.5 mm deep. Against that, the DW-5600E is 52 g and 13.4 mm, which is competitive, but the Rangeman is 93 g and 18.2 mm and the Mudmaster family is heavier still. If the watch has to go under a shirt cuff or a drysuit, the field watch wins outright — and the cheap square G-Shock is the only Casio here that keeps up.

Sensors and the dark

Here the field watch has nothing to offer. The Rangeman gives you a digital compass, a barometer, an altimeter, a thermometer, sunrise and sunset times and a radio that sets the watch from an atomic clock; the DW-5600E gives you an EL backlight that floods the whole dial. A field watch answers the dark with tritium tubes (Marathon, Luminox) or painted lume, which needs no button but also fades over a night — and tritium fades permanently, on a physics schedule Luminox publishes as 25 years.

If the sensors are the reason you are here, best G-Shock with compass is the page, and what an ABC watch is explains what those three sensors actually do.

Power: closer than you think

Most people assume the G-Shock wins here and on the top models it does, but the gap is smaller than the marketing suggests. Casio states about eight months of dark running for the Rangeman's Tough Solar and about five years on the DW-5600E's coin cell. Bertucci states a six-month reserve on the A-2T Solar and Timex four months on the Field Post Solar. All four are in the same class: nothing to charge, nothing to think about, and a cell that is a watchmaker's job once in a very long time.

Water and mud

A draw on the headline number and a G-Shock win on the detail. The Bertucci, the Rangeman and the DW-5600E are all 200 m. But the Rangeman adds mud-resistant button seals and a stated low-temperature rating to -10°C, and that is the difference between buttons that click after a season in a bog and buttons that grind. Meanwhile the most military-looking watch in this comparison, the Marathon GPQ, is 3 ATM — rain, not swimming. Read the number, not the dial.

Which one is still alive in 2046

On pure survivability over twenty years, the cheap G-Shock is the most likely of the four to still be running, because every part that fails is cheap and available. On looking like a watch you chose rather than one you were issued, the field watch wins. That is the trade, and it is not close to being a spec question.

Still deciding? The full lists are best field watches and the toughest G-Shock, and if the real question is cheap and indestructible, best G-Shock under $100 is the shortcut.