Wow is all I can say. I ordered this as a gift to give to my brother-in-law. I picked it for the obvious features, solar-powered, atomic reception, world time and mud,dust and shock resistance. I chose this among three other models seeing that it's the most manly of them all.

Receiving and unpacking from the box, I was completely impressed at the watch design. The picture does not do it justice. It made it look kind of toyish but in person it looked the part. Very manly and of really good quality. The casing looks very solid and gives the impression of indestructibility. It looks very heavy but it's really very light. The watch far surpassed my expectations.

Part of choosing this watch was reading the reviews. I snickered at anyone who complained about how hard it is to push the buttons and I thought, "What wussies. If you can't press the buttons with little effort then you don't deserve to own one."

Boy was I ever wrong! The buttons ARE HARD TO PRESS!! My fingers and hand start trembling whenever I have to keep pushing to go through the different features (world time, alarm, timer, etc.). They weren't kididng! I do accept it because I feel much more secure that no feature will be changed or activated on accident.

As far as the 5 circly displays that most people seem to dislike, all I can say is that wearers may know which timezone they are but can they tell the correct time without looking at the watch? The shaded timezone just simply confirms to the wearer that the timepiece is showing the correct time and that the watch has adjusted to the current location's time.

I sure hope my brother-in-law would appreciate this as much as I do. He owns a basic $40.00 G-Shock for travel so I do feel that he will be surprised.

Thank you.

8/8/2011

This is an update:

My brother-in-law was completely surprised by this gift. He mentioned that he was thinking of buying a solar powered watch sometime in the future so my gift was just in time. He appreciated the atomic control feature as he travels the world as part of his work (lucky guy) but his body takes a beating on air travels even though he goes first class all the way. One thing is for sure, his new G Shock can take the beatings and not complain even for a bit.

Mission accomplished!

Made in Thailand.