Casio WSD F10 Android Wear Smartwatch Review

Front of Casio WSD F10 smartwatch

Casio presented its Android Wear-WSD F10 at CES 2016. This watch is a fantastic watch which offers two highly desirable features — a super tough body, and a long-lasting battery mode.
Front of Casio WSD F10 smartwatch
The F10 is an activity watch, primarily made for cyclists, hikers, and fishermen. Anyone with a fondness for massive wrist wear is bound to love it.  The chunky body is huge, but it’s very lightweight at 93 grams with the strap, which is made from hard wearing urethane plastic. The F10 has been engineered to meet MIL-STD-810 standards, which means it withstands shock, humidity, radiation, vibration, high and low temperatures, plus ice and water. These features are common across Casio’s range of regular watches, but unseen in the Android Wear world, making the F10 instantly stand out.Side of Casio WSD F10 smartwatch
There are three buttons on the side, one for the power, and the other two for activating the app on your phone or cycling through data from the F10’s sensor array. The widgets look fantastic, with an almost military style that suits the watch’s build perfectly. You get a compass, air pressure and altitude readout, activity data, and even information on tides and sunrise times. Inside the Casio app on your phone, it’s possible to tailor alerts so you don’t miss ideal conditions for your favourite activity.Side of Casio WSD F10 smartwatch 02
Casio has made the F10 for men. It’s a bare-chested, hairy brute of a smartwatch, and utterly unsuited to female wrists. The Casio representative whose wrist you see in some of the pictures told me she didn’t mind the size, which meets with fashion in women’s watches, but would prefer something smaller when out exercising. That was the understatement of the year. On my wrist, it still looks large, but not ungainly, a testament to Casio’s excellent design.Side of Casio WSD F10 smartwatch 03
There is absolutely no way the Casio WSD F10 will be mistaken for any other Android Wear smartwatch, and that’s a good thing. It’s obviously a Casio design, totally apart from any other, and with a focused set of features that will appeal to people who like wearing watches like this. It’s a niche product, but then so are smartwatches in general.

This type of traditional watch fills a need already, so why not make a smartwatch version? It looks awesome, and has genuinely unique functionality that is useful. We don’t ask for much more from such a device.