New G-Shock DW-5600 and DW-6900 have new modules with LED light and longer battery life

We previously mentioned this in our coverage of the skeleton green DW-6900JT and the silver DW-5600FF, and now there is official confirmation that these new models are equipped with new modules. The new DW-5600 module is 3525 and the new DW-6900 module is 3529.

These modules have the same functions as the previous modules (and share the same functions themselves), but they are now equipped with an LED backlight, also known as a Super Illuminator, instead of the old electro-luminescent (EL) backlight. The LED light is more power-efficient and has a white color instead of the blue green of the EL backlight. The new modules offer better battery life of approximately 5 years versus 2 years for the previous modules. According to Casio manuals, the EL backlight “loses its illuminating power after very long term use,” and I can verify that this is very much the case with some of my G-Shock watches with EL backlights from the 2000s. The instruction manuals for the new modules with the LED light have no such warning, but they do warn that “frequent use of illumination will run down the battery.”

According to an official image of the DW-5600FF (above), the light does not look like what you would expect, meaning that there is something very different about it and the LED lights on previous squares like the GMW-B5000 and 5000U Series. You’ll see that the DW-5600FF (below) has a positive (i.e. noninverted) LCD display, but in the image of the watch above with the LED light activated, the display takes on the appearance of an inverted LCD display, with a dark background and light digits with the digits being illuminated rather than the background. (I don’t recall ever seeing this reversing effect before.) We don’t yet have any images or videos of the LED light of the DW-6900JT (which has an inverted LCD display in its normal state), so we don’t know if that will appear like a positive LCD display with the LED light activated, or if it will stay inverted. We also don’t know if the lights on future models will have the same effect as the DW-5600FF. (We would also like to see more of the DW-5600FF to verify that this isn’t some kind of mistake.)

(Update: Thanks to some of our readers for confirming that this reversing effect has been done on some previous models. So it is probably specific to the DW-5600FF-8 and may not be implemented on all new DW-5600/DW-6900 models.)

While it is likely that future DW-5600 and DW-6900 models will use the new modules, it remains to be seen if standard existing models like the DW-5600E-1V and DW-6900-1V will be updated with them.

The DW-5600FF-8 and DW-6900JT-3 are the first models with the new modules and LED lights.