I've had this watch for about three months now, and in general am very happy with it. The atomic timekeeping and solar charging work perfectly. I also own the Casio Men's GW5525A-1 G-Shock Limited Edition Atomic Tough Solar Watch (not able to link to it, see my other reviews if interested), and the time on both watches is synched perfectly. The watch has never failed to synch overnight.

Out of the box, the watch was slightly smaller than I had imagined it to be. Since I have small wrists, that did not bother me too much. What did bother me somewhat: the three "blackout" LCD sub-displays on the face were also smaller than I expected, which makes the already somewhat dim reverse displays even harder to read.

And yes, the reverse digital displays can be very hard to read, especially indoors. When indoors, it's very often necessary to position the watch so that overhead light reflects off the face at certain angles in order to easily see the information in the displays. Outdoors it's usually no problem (even in overcast conditions), but if you're in a dimly lit room you may very well have difficulty. There's a version of this watch with standard LCD sub-displays, but I chose this "blackout" version because of the "cool factor". It really is gorgeous, but from a functionality standpoint I have to admit standard LCD sub-displays would have been better. Other reviewers have stated they have no problem reading the sub-dials; I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. I kept the watch anyway, because of the fact it also has hands. I wouldn't rely on a purely digital blackout-LCD watch.

The hands are white; I would have preferred a shinier, more silvery metallic look as it would have fit in better with the faintly "mech" theme of the watch in my opinion. The hands are also tipped with green glow-in-the-dark phosphors to facilitate reading in low light conditions. Due to the fact that the phosphors fade within a few minutes of turning off the lights, this feature is next to completely useless.

The pushbutton light is adequate, but as other reviewers have said, Casio needs to spend a little more effort on their lighting systems. However, you will still be able to clearly see the hands, as well as the hour and minute tick marks. The light lasts for about two seconds at a time, whether or not you keep the button pressed down. The light does not adequately illuminate the digital displays, so it's only useful for viewing the hands.

When I first got the watch the digital time was already correctly synched, but the minute hand was slightly off, by about one minute. A bit disconcerting, but in the manual Casio describes a very simple procedure to align the minute hand so that it matches the digital displayed time perfectly. I performed this procedure two months ago and the minute hand is still perfectly synched with the actual minutes past the hour as displayed by the LCD window. The minute hand, by the way, moves three times per minute: at :00, :20, and :40. This makes the hand's movement seem more smooth and continuous, which is a nice touch.

Like any G-Shock, the watch contains the usual comprehensive array of world time, stopwatch, alarm, hourly chime and countdown timer functions. All work well, as they should. The alarm sound is a little low in volume but that doesn't bother me since I never use watches to wake myself up with anyway.

One very useful feature allows you to temporarily move the hands out of the way of the dials if a hand is covering an LCD sub-display that you need to see. When you're done, a button press moves the hands right back to where they're supposed to be.

The instruction manual is tiny but thick, and contains a ton of information on how to get the most out of this surprisingly complicated watch. I hate these tiny "Post-It Note" style manuals with their microscopic fonts, and recommend that you search for and print out the .PDF equivalent manual online. (Note: I included a link to the .PDF manual in the comments.)

Overall, I'm happy with this watch. It looks great and I get a lot of compliments when people see it. Casio did a fine job balancing macho and elegant with this design. Despite the caveats I've described above, I have no problem recommending this watch. Just be aware that the LCD displays can be very difficult to read.