Playing With the GW-B5600

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Some watches can do a lot and others can do a little The Origin watch, model number GW-B5600 can charge itself with daylight and mark GPS coordinates within seconds, and that's about it. I tested it while driving from Switzerland to Spain.

There are a few motorway stops that I was curious about so as I drove I could short press the bottom right button and it took the date, time, and GPS coordinates at that point so that I could review points on the map later on. A watch this as this is highly specialised and fits a narrow niche. Casio says "This is a good watch for pilots to mark which city they were in but I think differently.

This is a good watch for people to mark where they took a picture, or to mark a waypoint during a walk or some other event. Once you press the button the watch and phone do the rest. You can then provide the location with a memorable name.

The Origin world times, battery status and more screengrab

Casio watches come with a battery life of between 2-10 years and the solar watch advertises that it has a battery life of 22 months so this could be shorter than many.

More info: The G-Heritage Story — Evolution Of The Casio G-Shock Origin

The watch gives home town time, world time, alarms, stopwatch and countdown timer. It has good backlight illumination and provides us with quick GPS location marking. It is limited in what it can do but that is the case with most low end Casio watches. Each one fills a different niche.

Solar Charging

Battery information and charge information is not that useful. We don't know whether it is charging fast or slow, and what the battery charge percentage is. What I do know is that after walking with the watch exposed to the sun on a bag strap it indicates that it is either almost full or full, quickly.

Watches that don't need to be charged every day, or every week are nice, because you can forget about them for months at a time. I think that this is the type of watch that I would strap to a bag. When I want to store location data I can just press the button and continue walking.

Use Case

If you know where you're walking, or you're exploring without the need for a GPS this is a cheaper alternative to a GPS like the Garmin Etrex 32x. When you get to a point of interest or a location that you want to add to a map you can get the coordinates, for later use. This is lighter, and less hassle.