“Always be prepared” — it’s a mantra hammered into the minds of outdoor enthusiasts everywhere; but fitness fanatics and aspiring athletes haven’t always taken the same approach. For the typical gym-goer, having to improvise an at-home workout generally does little more than highlight the lack of data available to anyone who doesn’t live inside a fitness center — the step-counter on your iPhone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Enter: the new G-SHOCK GBDH1000 — a nearly indestructible fitness watch that brings that same Eagle Scout attitude of an outdoors-first adventure watch to a package that even the most discerning athlete will appreciate.

Key Specs

Water Resistance: 200m
Sensors: Optical Heart Rate, Magnetic (compass), Pressure (altitude/atmospheric pressure), Thermo (temperature), 3-Axis Accelerometer (step count/distance)
Charging Modes: USB and Solar-Assisted
Connected Features: G-SHOCK MOVE App
Battrey Life: 14 hours in Training Mode, 12 months in Time Mode

Optical Heart Rate Sensor

At the core of any self-respecting fitness watch is an optical heart rate sensor, which works by measuring the blood flow beneath the skin of your wrist to determine your heart rate. This is the data that tells you to go harder or take it easier, and at the end of the day, that’s the key to unlocking a more effective fitness routine. For G-SHOCK, it was a must-have when designing a watch for the fitness crowd, and The GBDH1000 feeds you the data you’re looking for in real-time, giving you the option to train in specific heart rate zones or even calculate VO2max.

Plus, with the help of a clever algorithm developed in partnership with Firstbeat, fitness enthusiasts can see how effective their training was in the G-SHOCK MOVE App.

Big Data, Trim Package

The GBDH1000 packs a total of five sensors in its case — an amount of tech which, under normal circumstances, would result in a massive, almost comically clunky timepiece. This was one of the primary challenges faced by the design team at G-SHOCK; in order to create a fitness watch that would appeal to armchair athletes and future Olympians alike, the watch would have to remain slim. Whether you’re pounding out push-ups in the living room or heading out for a “social distancing” run around the neighborhood, the last thing you want strapped to your wrist is a big bulky watch.

Fortunately, the GBDH1000 remains right in line with the rest of the G-SHOCK lineup thanks to a little ingenuity from G-SHOCK’s design team. According to one team member, they were able to accomplish this through “the development and integration of a new watch LSI, which reduces the power consumption of the system and improves the efficiency of the solar cell. Also, this was achieved by multiplying the high-density mounting and exterior technology that G-SHOCK is known for.”

If that’s too much product-nerd lingo for you (this is Gear Patrol, after all), the main takeaway is this: For the first time ever, G-SHOCK integrated an optical heart rate sensor, Magnetic sensor (compass), Pressure sensor (altitude/atmospheric pressure), Thermo sensor (temperature) and a 3-Axis Accelerometer (step count/distance) without having to increase the size of the case by so much as a millimeter.

Battery Life

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the GBDH1000 is the battery life. Even when all of the fitness-tracking sensors are turned on, including GPS and optical heart rate, you’ll still manage 14 hours of battery life. That’s a staggering number, especially when you think about how long your phone battery lasts when you’re running its GPS.

And yet, that number still pales in comparison to how long the battery will last in Time Mode. This may sound obvious (Training Mode uses a lot more energy), but how G-SHOCK accomplished this is the interesting bit. Thanks to a solar cell, G-SHOCK was able to ensure that the GBDH1000’s battery life would last for 12 months.

G-SHOCK MOVE App

Here’s the icing on the cake: with the G-SHOCK MOVE app, all of your data is at your fingertips in a centralized, easy-to-navigate display. The home screen is entirely customizable, so you can make sure that whatever data you’re most interested in shows up at the top of the display.

On the activity pages (which populate within the app once you’ve tracked an activity), you’ll get snapshots of your routes, distances, times and average paces. Click into any one activity and you’ll be met with a heavy dose of additional data. Everything you could want to know is right there — including time spent in given heart rate zones provided by the optical heart rate sensor. And if you were ever curious the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during exercise, that data is there too in the form of your VO2max.

All of this data culminates in the MOVE app’s ability to provide customized training plans for you automatically. Once you input a starting point, the app has an algorithm that will provide you with workouts to keep your progress moving forward. Plus, because the app has tons of data points on you, it can tell whether or not you’re being overworked or “redlining” and tell you to take some rest — which leads to optimal results.

You may be wondering: “What happens to my data if I misplace my watch and my phone? Is all of my data lost forever?” Luckily, G-SHOCK thought about that in the design of the app. All of your training data is stored on G-SHOCK’s cloud servers so that you can access it from the web as well.