Casio G-Shock GBA-800 hybrid smartwatch adds fitness tracking smarts

Casio's taken its time with the wearable game – and while its embraced full smartwatches with the ProTrek WSD-F20 Android Wear watch – the company has finally unveiled its first hybrid fitness tracking watch at CES 2018.

The company dubs plenty of its watches as hybrids, though this is perhaps the first example we've seen of a design, which features traditional watch hands, lacks a digital display and still has genuine smarts under the hood.

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The G-Shock GBA-800 is primarily an analogue watch, and comes in six bold colours. In a first for Casio, the GBA-800 features a 3-axis accelerometer, which will measure steps and calories burned from the movement of your arm.

You can set goals within the app, and progress is shown via the small screen placed at 2 o'clock. The dial fills up to show the percentage completed. Step data will also be shown on the larger screen, placed at the bottom of the watch face.

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It's hardly a fitness tracking experience that will give Fitbit a run for its money, but it's a neat and simple addition to a G-Shock line-up that's getting smarter. The company also showed off its Rangeman G-Shock GPR-B1000 with GPS navigation and solar charging.

However, we can see the G-Shock GBA-800 doing well for Casio. There's plenty of evidence out there from the likes of Fossil that customers are receptive and hungry for smart features. What's more, the GBA-800 isn't as frighteningly large, and the bold colours are fun. In a word, we're fans of Casio's hybrid.

We don't yet have a confirmed release date or price for the GBA-800, but we know it will follow the Rangeman's release in April.