Casio WSD-F30 hands-on: MrMobile's favorite smartwatch gets an upgrade

For my money, nobody builds a better summertime smartwatch than Casio. The company's ProTrek series has it all: alti-barometers, rugged casings, standalone GPS, and dual-layer displays that offer incredible readability in direct sunlight. Even occasional outdoorsmen such as myself can appreciate the ProTrek F10 and F20 for the sheer boldness of their oversized designs, while those in search of more petite wearables have understandably gone elsewhere.

With the ProTrek WSD-F30, Casio seems to have gotten the memo that bigger is only better up to a point. It's still a thick watch, barely half a millimeter thinner than the F20, but it's now almost 4 millimeters narrower, which makes a real difference on the wrist. Casio has also made the watchband more flexible, while also adding notches for more granular sizing options. On the tech side, the older LCD watchfaces have been swapped out for a higher-resolution OLED panel, while the monochrome secondary display now includes health info alongside the time.

Most exciting for fans of Android-powered wearables is the fast that the WSD-F30 is our first look at the newly renovated Wear OS. It was tough to get the F30 out of its locked retail demo mode long enough to get more than fleeting impressions of the new software, but the UI's simple mechanic of swiping in from the cardinal compass directions became second nature almost immediately.

For more, check out the ProTrek F30 Hands-On above, and be sure you're subscribed to MrMobile's YouTube Channel so you don't miss the full review once the time comes for a real-world test drive!

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