Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

Trekking: The Smart Outdoor Watch lives up to its name

Brandon Widder
By

Man isn’t meant to stay indoors — our weekly “Trekking” column can attest to that. It’s a column dedicated to the adventurer inside of all of us, the one pining to ditch the office humdrum for a quick surf session or seven-week jaunt in the Grand Tetons. One day we may highlight an ultra-light stove and the next a set of handmade canoe paddles. Life doesn’t just happen inside the workplace, so get outside and live it.

Recommended Videos

When you think about smartwatches, Casio probably isn’t the first manufacturer that comes to mind. However, although the 70-year-old electronics company built its notoriety on calculators and electronic dictionaries, it’s also never been one to sit at the sidelines and watch the competition pass it by. Casio’s forthcoming Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 ($500) is a perfect example —and one apt for your next adventure.

Related: The Sunnto Traverse is smart only where it matters

The Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10The WSD-510 isn’t particularly flashy when it comes to looks, but it’s not the bulky design that’s meant to attract consumers. The colossal, rugged device combines the best facets of Android Wear and its own proprietary set of sensors, thus allowing you to perform an assortment of tasks while tracking any metric you might want to know. The dual-layer LCD display gives you quick access to the operating system’s main functions — including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Fit — along with special “tools” that make use of an embedded pressure sensor, accelerometer, gyrometer, and compass. These allow you to see things such as your altitude and direction at glance, along with the air pressure and sunrise-set times.

Casio’s offering sets itself apart in other facets, too. The watch showcases a host of real-time notifications as you go about activities such as hiking and fishing, meaning changes you can quickly see your speed, distance, and subtle changes in atmospheric pressure, among other useful information. The historical data and trends can help you further improve upon your goals, especially when combined with supported third-party apps and other software aimed at specific activities. A monochrome mode even lets you turn off the “smart” functionality on a whim, essentially turning your watch into a basic accessory that touts little more than the time and a month-long battery.

However, the watch’s biggest features is that it’s water-resistant to 50 meters, which meets the U.S. military’s MSL-STD-810 standard. The host of preloaded apps — MyRadar, RunKeeper, Yamap, etc. — make it even more resourceful, as does its innate compatibility with Android and iOS devices. The array of colors just gives you something to think over while you wait for the WSD-510 to ship at the end of April.

Topics
Brandon Widder
Brandon Widder
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brandon Widder is a journalist and a staff writer for the Manual and its brother site, Digital Trends, where he covers tech…
How long should you let new cigars rest in a humidor?
Cigar humidor

Looking at those beautiful, oily cigars you've just unboxed or unwrapped, the calling to light up is real. I get it. I always want to smoke my cigars right away, too. But you shouldn't. Mail day is always exciting after you've ordered a slew of new cigars. When they arrive, the real fun begins. You'll probably need to organize your humidor to make the new sticks fit or arrange them for optimal humidification. As you're handling them, it's difficult to resist the temptation to crack open the cellophane or boxes and smoke one right away. While you can do that in most cases, I would recommend against it. Depending on where those cigars came from, where you live, and how they traveled, they might need a little time to rest in a humidor. They'll need to replenish some humidity and moisture or dry out a little.
How long should you let your new cigars rest?

When you put cigars in a humidor, especially one that's filled, they'll soak up and release humidity over time until they reach the average RH (relative humidity) that you have set inside your humidor. If you have a device like a that does this automatically, it will produce moisture and humidity to keep the levels optimal. You can also achieve the same thing with in smaller humidors, which release and soak up the humidity to match the levels on the label. Boveda packs come in a range of RH levels, from the low to mid-60s to the mid-70s.

Read more
The 11 best Kevin Costner movies, ranked
He has a full resume of films, but if you're a Costner fan, then you must see these movies
Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves

An all-American, blue-collar working man turned Hollywood essential, Kevin Costner has lived a life full of experience and dreams that some can only imagine. Starting out as a small kid -- 5'2" at high school graduation -- who moved around a lot, Costner was fond of things like poetry, writing, and singing in his Baptist choir. Outside of the arts, he was also very interested in sports of all kinds, which is reflected in his film career to this day. Also a man of the outdoors, Costner built his own canoe at 18 and paddled it through sections where Lewis and Clark ventured. Fun facts aside, Costner had a full and interesting life before the world got to know him as the charming and eloquent movie man we know him to be today.
From his past life, accomplishments, and hobbies, Costner was fully prepared to write, direct, and act for the screen as he fulfilled yet another lifelong dream. A man who was once called "The King of the Sports Movie," Costner has been able to act in films of a subject matter near and dear to his heart that became the films he is best known for. And that doesn’t include his many other successful movies having to do with politics, crime, and romance that also make for some of his best roles. Luckily, we’re here to talk about all of those films at once as we celebrate the man who has accomplished more in one lifetime than some could in many. Here are the best Kevin Costner movies of all time.

11. Open Range (2003)

Read more
The best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and more
If you haven't seen these films at least one time, you need to ... and then watch them again and again
Scene from Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson

Of all the contemporary film auteurs, perhaps no one’s work has permeated pop culture as thoroughly as Quentin Tarantino's. This director’s hyper-stylized, retro fantasy worlds have come to define cinematic coolness. His clever mashups of genres, exquisite sense of aesthetics, impeccable editing, uproarious suspensefulness, and impossibly quippy dialogue have been endlessly imitated.
Given the current political landscape, Tarantino’s work has undergone a serious critical re-evaluation from Black and feminist critics and scholars who point toward both his allegedly abusive behaviors and the offensive politics and rhetoric of his films. It’s true that in this new light, for many, there may be nothing redeemable about his entire oeuvre. 
However, to discard all Quentin Tarantino movies would discount the impossible talent of his frequent collaborators and stars, such as Sally Menke (who edited all of Tarantino’s movies until her death in 2010), Uma Thurman (who not only played the protagonist of Tarantino’s most iconic movies but was also credited as a co-writer on Kill Bill), Samuel L. Jackson (a frequent Tarantino star), and many more.
With that in mind, here’s our (subjective!) ranking of the greatest directed Quentin Tarantino movies of all time.

9. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Read more