A smartwatch for hikers.
A smartwatch for hikers.
The Casio WSD-F20 is Casio’s second Android Wear smartwatch, following the WSD-F10.
The biggest difference between the two is that the WSD-F20 now has built-in GPS tracking. The WSD-F20 looks quite similar to its predecessor with a round 1.32-inch 320 x 300 pixels resolution display and a really chunky bezel. The screen isn’t that big, but the massive bezel makes the watch much larger than most other smartwatches.
The screen is a dual-layer LCD panel, which means that when the watch isn’t in use, it switches to a simple monochrome transflective display, which also helps to save battery power.
To take advantage of all of the watch’s sensors, Casio has also added a few custom watch faces to the WSD-F20 including ones that constantly display your altitude, distance travelled and air pressure.
The display itself is recessed from the bezel, which gives it some protection from scratches and drops, and the entire watch is certified to MILSTD810G standards, which encompasses a whole series of militarygrade test conditions for temperature, pressure, shock impact and more. A rarity among Android Wear smartwatches, the WSD-F20 is also water-resistant up to 50 meters, or five atmospheres of pressure, which means you can wear it while swimming.
On the right-side of the watch you’ll find three buttons. In the middle is the standard Android Wear button, which lets you toggle between the apps menu and watch face.
The top button launches the Tools menu, which is unique to the WSD-F20, while the lower button launches a dedicated location-tracking app.
In the Tools section, you’ll see why the WD-F20 falls under Casio’s ProTrek brand. There’s an array of information here dedicated to hiking and outdoor sports, including an altimeter, barometer, a clock showing the sunrise and sunset times, a compass and an indicator of the day’s tide levels.
Press the lower button and you’ll launch the location-finder app, which uses the watch’s built-in GPS to show your current location. As you often won’t have Wi-Fi or even a 3G connection while you’re out hiking, this app can actually use pre-downloaded map data to display maps offline.
You can tag locations you’ve visited and add voice notes and memos to them.
Casio hasn’t revealed the processor inside the WSD-F20, but a system scan shows it to be a dual-core Cortex-A7 CPU, running at 1GHz (which likely makes it the MediaTek MT2601).
While that gives it only half the cores and a slower clock speed than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100, used in a number of other Android smartwatches, the WSD-F20 didn’t lag or struggle with any of the apps I installed on it.
Casio also doesn’t provide details regarding the battery spec of the WSD-F20 but it generally will last about one day on a full charge. Turning on GPS and actively tracking a route does however cause the battery to drain alarmingly fast. When you do need to charge the watch, it uses a simple magnetic charging plug that connects with a port on the side of the watch. Unfortunately, it’s quite easy for it to become accidentally dislodged.
It’s definitely not your everyday smartwatch, but with offline maps, built-in GPS, an array of sensors and a MIL-spec, waterproof build, the WSD-F20 will be one of the best smartwatches for anyone that spends a lot of time outdoors.
