Hands-On: Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A Watch

As a child of the 1990s, I’ve always had a soft spot for the high-tech, colorful, organic liquid-metal design trends that permeated the latter half of that decade into the early 2000s — think Oakley sunglasses, the colored clear-case Nintendo 64, and the like. It’s a distinctive, often divisive era in design, but as time marches on, a new wave of Y2K-era nostalgia is building across popular culture. Casio seems to be the first watchmaker to dive deeply into this trend, creating a wild, unapologetically bold all-new G-Shock silhouette that looks like it could have come straight from the year 2000. The new Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A combines the G-Shock’s traditional mix of toughness and functionality with an out-of-this-world new form factor and a handful of technical advancements, creating a fun, funky timepiece that makes me feel like a kid again in ways few watches do.

Even by G-Shock’s generous sizing standards, the Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A is a massive watch. Measuring in at 58.2mm wide and a towering 19.6mm thick, the smooth, retro-futuristic resin case is enough to dwarf nearly any wrist (one of the aforementioned ways this watch makes me feel like a kid again), but like many other G-Shock designs, the numbers tell far from the full story. Not only does the resin construction make this case shockingly light, but this organically streamlined shape wraps around even my modest 6.75-inch wrist comfortably and without overhang. The GAV01A-8A’s real secret weapon for wearability, though, is its relatively compact 49.1mm lug-to-lug length. This is shorter than a fair number of more conventional 40/41mm wide watch cases. Even given this accessible lug-to-lug size, though, this is a case that positively screams for attention – this will not blend quietly into your outfit, or slide under a cuff, or demurely complete an ensemble, far from it. Love it or hate it, this design becomes the centerpiece of whatever outfit you happen to be wearing at the time.

Beyond the ponderous proportions, this largely comes down to the genuinely radical form factor here. Integrated bracelets are a staple of modern watchmaking, but nothing gets more integrated than this. Rather than a smooth, flowing transition between case and strap, there’s literally no transition at all. Both strap ends flow directly, unbroken, into the muscular sloping case body, separated only by a seam line running from 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock. With an organically sculpted shape and funky, Oakley-esque oval apertures at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock, it’s a case and strap design like no other, however, it might divide enthusiast opinions. What truly gives the new GA-V01 platform its character, though, is this mix of almost liquid sleekness with dramatic, chunky protrusions. There are raised studs at 1 o’clock, 5 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and 11 o’clock here, as a playful inverse of the classic 5600 series G-Shock’s lug dimples, but the external minutes scale truly steals the show. Rather than placing its hour indices and minutes track beneath the crystal, Casio instead decides to use these components as an additional layer of shock protection. Mounted atop the bezel like a set of squared-off teeth, the soft resin indices absorb and deflect impacts headed toward the recessed spherical mineral crystal. This sort of outlandish design as functional protection is a classic G-Shock concept, and the translation of this idea here lends the already distinctive GAV01A-8A miles of additional personality. This idea is further echoed in the quartet of gray blunted-cone pushers and the blunted pyramidal case side flanges. The overall shape, conical and redolent with spiny protrusions, calls to mind a futuristic sea urchin as much as anything else. According to Casio, the design was inspired by the shock-resistant rubber ball used in testing the first G-Shock, but the design fits perfectly into the techno-biological look of late-‘90s futurism. This is especially true for the GAV01A-8A, which renders all this in bright metallic silver. Like the rest of the G-Shock family, the GAV01A-8A offers a beefy 200 meters of water resistance to complement its immense shock resistance.

The Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A’s ana-digi dial is nearly as stylized as its wild, idiosyncratic case. When the watch line was originally launched for the Chinese market in early 2025, Casio referred to it as the “Cool Eyes,” and it’s easy enough to see why. The negative LCD digital subdial does look like a stylized, bug-like pair of cartoon eyes, with more than a passing resemblance to Spider-Man or Sonic the Hedgehog. The 9 o’clock side of this display is dominated by the mode selection information for the currently selected function. Although the wide, funky circle-motif handset certainly grabs attention (and remains impressively legible paired to the external indices and scales), it’s the way the hands are attached that is truly groundbreaking. Rather than a direct physical connection, the minutes hand is instead held on magnetically. This allows the minute hand to work as an additional shock absorber, freeing the hand to move and dissipate energy during an impact. While we haven’t had a chance to test this feature in action, Casio claims the hand will migrate back to the correct position within a handful of minutes after a major hit. Thanks to the external scales and indices, much of the real estate under the crystal is left open, lending the metallic silver dial texture ample breathing room and making this the rare G-Shock design with a wealth of negative space.

While the Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A’s exterior may be adventurous and unorthodox, the in-house Module 5751 ana-digi quartz movement within is much more conventional. Like virtually every G-Shock movement, the Module 5751 is filled to the brim with complications, including a world timer, automatic daylight savings time correction, a 24-hour countdown timer, a 1/100-second split-seconds chronograph, five programmable daily alarms, an hourly time signal, a perpetual calendar, and LED dial illumination. Beyond this laundry list of features, the Module 5751 is a decent performer, offering a robust 10-year battery life and a +15/-15 seconds per month accuracy rating.

Referring to the Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A’s strap feels a touch disingenuous, as both ends of the metallic silver resin strap also function as halves of the watch’s outer case. That said, the seamless, rounded execution fits the Y2K-tech vibe here perfectly, with a double-pronged pin buckle and a playfully stylized set of oval holes.

There’s something about the sleek-yet-funky, high-tech optimism of the late ’90s and early ‘00s that’s simply fun, and as the cultural wave of nostalgia for this period begins to crest, Casio seems poised to profit from it. While its massive, over-the-top styling certainly won’t speak to everyone, the Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A offers enough sheer joyfulness and technical innovation to temper this wild design. The Casio G-Shock GAV01A-8A is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this watch stands at $140 USD as of press time. For more information, please visit the Casio G-Shock website.