Purple Sunrise

Sorry for my absence lately. First two jobs, then change of jobs, loads of other work, meeting a lot of interesting people and maybe a lack of interest in writing. Fact was that during the many years of writing for 50 Gs, I am almost out of Gs to write about. There were still some Gs I want to put on the article list, but I had no hurry to write, until I saw this purple pink beauty a few months ago popping up. I was hoping it would be a reasonably priced Frog, and not avery exclusive Titanium version. And luckily, it was. Because of my busy schedule, it took me three weeks to complete this article.

This Frogman is part of a new series of Men In Color series, a returning series of Master of G models in a specific color scheme, started with the Men In Black series in 1997. Since then, if I count correctly, Casio has released already 18 different Men In Color series, before this series in Sunrise Purple has been released. Quite an amazing color it is. I think everybody loves sunsets and sunrises. The unique colors shades of sunrise and sunset are caused by Rayleigh scattering. It’s a phenomenon caused by atmospheric particles that are smaller than the wavelength of light (roughly 380 - 780 nm). During daytime mostly blue colors are filtered out of the white sunlight, causing our blue skies. When the sun is low at the horizon, however, the distance that light travels through the atmosphere is much longer, causing a shift of the scattered light towards longer wavelengths as yellow and red. The last bits of light, seen after sunrise can sometimes turn pink or even purplish. This must have inspired the designers of Casio to make this series. It sounds nice of course, but it also could have been called Raspberry Purple, because the shade of color this series comes close to that of raspberry juice. A shade somewhere between pink and fuchsia.

The Men In Sunrise Purple series contain three models, a Mudman, a Riseman and this Frogman. The Mudmad and Riseman have both a negative display (a reversed display with white digits on a black background). In my opinion the Frogman looks the best. For me the other two models would have looked better with the same amber positive display as this Frogman.

Despite of the playful color, the GFW-1000SR-4JF is quite a serious watch. The Stainless Steel case has been DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) coated, protecting the case from scratches and salty sea water. The asymmetric design makes the watch comfortable to wear (when worn left). The shape prevents the case hammering in your hand if you bend your hand suddenly towards your wrist, a thing some big watches tend to do when not asymmetrical.
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The GWF-1000SR Frogman is quite a complete watch. It is solar powered and the rechargeable battery has quite a large capacity. In large parts of the world, you don’t have to worry about the time keeping, as the watch has Multiband 6 Waveceptor function. It can receive the time signal from 2 transmitters in Europe, also 2 in Japan, one in China and one in the USA.

The Frogman is primary designed for diving. The Tidegraph prominently shown on the display can be a very handy feature. Also for me, living close to the sea, it is a handy instrument, even though I am not a diver. A Moon Phase indicator is also included in the display. Like all Frogman models Casio had released in the past, there is a Dive Timer on board, so you can record your diving activities. The Dive Timer can be easily accessed by press and holding the MODE button for a few seconds. A total of 10 Dive Records can be recorded.

All other functions of the watch can be reached by short pressing the MODE button. Starting from Time Keeping Mode, you first enter the Diving Log call Mode, where you can view your last 10 dive activities. The next mode you enter is the Tide and Moon Data Mode. In this mode you can view the tide and moon phase at your home location. The Tidegraph can be easily programmed, by inputting the time of the current High Tide in your location.

The number reads July 20th, 2015. The 201st day of a year ending with a 5 (E is the 5th letter of the alphabeth)

The last four modes are pretty usual modes for modern G-Shocks. First is the World Time Mode with pre-programmed time of 48 cities in 31 time zones. I’m pretty happy that Casio not only pre-programs a few popular dive spots (or popular whale observation spots) in their Frogman models, but now cover about every time zone in the world. Next is the Alarm Mode with 4 regular alarms, a Snooze Alarm and of course the Hourly Time Signal. The last two modes are Stopwatch Mode and the Countdown Timer Mode, which both have a maximum capacity of 24 hours, which is in almost all cases more than enough. Frankly those are my most used Modes of G-Shocks in my daily life, besides Time Keeping Mode.

I normally love the button beep, but in some cases you don’t want to make any noise. It is possible to turn off the button tone in the Adjustment Mode. Also you can choose between a backlight illumination of 1.5 or 3 seconds.

The pinkish purple color might not be suitable for everyone, although I think this model will be quite popular in East Asia and Japan. I'm half Indonesian myself, and I think red, purple and pink colors suit me very well. When it was released, the first wave of this model was not easy to find in the shops. Luckily my friend Yupadee in Tokyo, found one in a shop for me, and another one for a good friend of me in Thailand. Quite a lot of people want to make fast money by buying the regular models in the shops and sell it for quite a high price on Yahoo Japan nowadays. I paid retail, ¥77000 plus tax and shipping, which is quite a price for a G-Shock, but not for a GWF-1000 Frogman. I tried to find the production notes, but I couldn’t find it. Somehow I think this model will be available for some time and the price might drop, like happened to the Burning Red model. However, the G-Shock market has changed a lot the past 5 years and the demand for this model might remain higher than the supply. Predicting prices of limited edition G-Shocks becomes quite harder nowadays. Although I can easily wear this watch, I love this color, I think also women will love this big watch, specially in East Asia. I learned from Casio this model will soon be limited available in the US too. This might also be a sign this watch will be produced for a longer period of time, usually about 3000 to 5000 pieces per month. For the Men In Sunrise Purple series, I think this model will be much more popular than the other two models, because of the display. I’ve got nothing against negative displays, but I think it match better with less bright and dark colors.