That was the GW-300 that came out one year earlier, in 2002. The GW-500 is not "very similar" its actually a predecessor to the GW-M500 with "M" here meaning modified.The very similar GW-500 (no M) came out in 2003. I believe this was the first mainstream Wave Ceptor G-Shock (or even Casio in general) for the USDM.
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That was idea behind creating analog digital watches thread which i created and sustain and welcome any meaningful addition to it.Thanks for posting the thread. I see quite a lot of similarity among generations, models, and lines. It's been a dream of mine to create a style taxonomic tree for G-Shocks and I can do so for specific features (e.,g., three eyes) but there are so, so many models, it's daunting.
Soon I'll be starting a thread to capture my fascinations with G-Shock design. It's such a rich domain with so many fascinating branches. There are two big problems with doing this. First, when I discover a piece I want to study, I usually try to buy it. Second, with some of these pieces pushing a quarter century or more of age, it's a race against time.
A library of dead or inert specimens just doesn't excite me as much as a functioning collection.
Yes, the M suffix was added to denote the upgrade to Multi-Band to older models. But in the case of the GW-M5610, it already had a predecessor having MB5 called the GW-M5600 so they called it the GW-M5610 to denote the upgrade to MB6.It seems like the Waveceptor/MB6 designation would be the "G" on some models, based on the small sample list below. Since they all contain W... I guess maybe the M was added to designate the newer MB6 instead of Waveceptor? It's somewhat confusing IMO.
DW-5000 - non solar/non mb6
DW-5200 - non solar/non mb6
DW-5600 - non solar/non mb6
GW-5000 - solar/mb6
GW-M5610 - solar/mb6
GW-500 - solar/waveceptor
GWM-500 - solar/mb6