Review of the Casio Baby-G BGA100-8B

Up for review today is the Casio Baby-G BGA100-8B. It’s a G-Shock for women, if the rhinestone-accented pink dial and heart-shaped window didn’t already tip you off. As with the forthcoming mini line, Casio has scaled down the full G-Shock requirements for the Baby-G line:

Water resistant to 100m (330ft) vs 200m.
Battery powered instead of solar.
Manual versus radio-set.
Accuracy 30 seconds per month versus 15.

The rest of the specifications are equivalent:

LED backlight.
World time (29 time zones, 27 cities).
Four daily alarms and one more with snooze.
60-minute countdown timer.
60-minute stopwatch.
Two-year battery life.
Clear grey case and band, thorn buckle, steel bezel, mineral crystal.
39mm by 13mm, 42g.
Casio movement 5059 (PDF of manual).

Please read on for more.

This is a watch with an interesting character. The highly polished stainless steel bezel seen at left, is a nice decorative and protective accent. If you look closely, you can see the scratches already present, as I used a couple of young girls to test out its toughness. I’m happy to report that a two and four year old combined could not harm it, and both liked the watch and wanted to wear it, despite not being able to read time yet. In fact, Casio PR has kindly agreed to let the older one keep this watch — a gesture appreciated all around.

In the heart-shaped window, there is an animation of LCD hearts that loops. It doesn’t add any functionality, but it’s cute and might serve as a nice reminder if you buy it as a gift. Around the heart window are rhinestones, which also appear on the calligraphy numerals.

The backlight is an orange-yellow LED, located at six o’clock and actuated by the upper right hand button. On the right, you can see it lit up in the picture. It’s hard to read the digital displays due to the oblique angle, but the hands are very well illuminated and easy to read.

My wife also liked this watch, finding it comfortable and well suited to office wear. Not too sporty, not too large, light weight, easy to read and (for a G-Shock) unobtrusive.

The digital window at six o’clock does the heavy lifting for this watch: world time, alarms, stopwatch, etc. The analog hands just display the primary timezone. This works quite well, though since the digital display is compact you may need to squint a bit to make it out. That also limits the sporting uses, as small digits require that you not be in motion to read.

The grey-shaded clear band is flexible and narrow enough to not gather sweat. The transparency is a nice accent and quite fashionable right now.

Overall, this one got kudos from the wife, the small girls, and myself, which is pretty amazing, really. It’s practical, inexpensive, durable and attractive. If you’re in the market for an all-round watch that’s feminine without being pretentious, then the BGA100-8B might be exactly what you need.