Casio Men's PRW5100G-4 Pro-Trek Tough Solar Atomic Analog-Digital Watch

Casio Men's PRW5100G-4 Pro-Trek Tough Solar Atomic Analog-Digital Watch

This is an amazing watch at a great price, it is almost half the price of the Black Titan PRW-5100YT-1J, with the only differences being the band, the color and the sapphire crystal, all things I do not need on this watch.

This newest version of Casio's Pro-Trek 5000/5100 series is visually striking mostly matte black and sporting a polished black inner bezel where the degrees are listed in orange. With its' one-piece coated nylon strap, this new Pro-Trek sits around 18mm high or about 3-4mm higher on a wrist than the standard 500/5000 model depending on how tight the watch is worn. It also comes with a second elastic band with rubber no-slip grips on the back, and the buckle must be removed the band to thread it through the strap adapters on the watch. The solar panel on the face has a nice dark color, not a blue or purple tint that some other solar panels have. The LCD display has a sight orange tint keeping with the theme of the watch. While the minute hand will cover the LCD display, there is enough space to read the display at an angle even with the hand covering it.

The hour and minute hands have a generous amount of illumination on them (for Casio standards) and even the second hand is completely luminous on the tip beyond the eye. The hour markers do not have as bright of illumination, nor do they stay bright as long. The back-light is a bright white LED that illuminates across the face from the 6 o'clock position. It is bright enough to read the hands and most of the LCD display which is not back-lit, and can be set to auto-illuminate in 1 or 3 second increments.

The ABC functions are similar to other Pathfinders and pro-treks in this series as the second hand is used to measure barometric and altitude differential as well as acting as a compass needle. In the compass mode, the degrees are also listed on the LCD display. The graph is small located on the right side of the LCD display, giving trends for barometric pressure and altitude. The markings on the watch are small, and do hinder some of the functions that are easier to read on an all digital Pro-Trek or Pathfinder model.

A unique feature to this series of watch is the Tough Movement, which will auto-correct the position of the hands should they be exposed to shock or a magnetic field. Other things to note are that the world time is selected from the list of cites around the dial. The watch also has multi-band 6 atomic reception and the buttons can be muted. Holding the mode button for 3 seconds in any mode brings the watch back to the home screen.

This Pro-Trek is one of the most expensive of all models released in this series, but the striking color scheme, rugged looks and robust feature set make this a buy for any collector or casual adventurer willing to sacrifice some readability found in all-digital ABC watches for slick styling.