Transcription
This is a $4,000 quartz watch, and it's the most precise watch I've ever put on my [Music] wrist. I've been trying to get my hands on one of these for years because this is one of the best quartz watches ever made and one of the coolest watches, quartz or mechanical, that you can get for this price. But that's just like my opinion, man.
How could an electronic watch cost $4,000? Who would pay that much? Are they unwell? Should we send help? Yeah, you probably should send help. But also, I think the people who appreciate what this watch is doing, those people are thinking clearly compared to most other watch collectors because this watch makes a lot of sense.
Citizen is a huge watch maker. Most of its watches are affordable quartz watches and many of those are quartz and light powered. Citizen was the first watch maker to get a photovoltaic analog watch to the market. That was back in 1976. The Cristron Solar Cell watch. That was a huge deal. These days, Citizen refers to its light powered watches as Eco Drive watches. They range from only a couple hundred to this $4,000 watch and even to higher prices. But this watch isn't just about the movement. It's mostly about that, but it's not all about that.
This line of high-end Citizen watches used to be called the Chronom Master, and it was only available in Japan. But a few years ago, Citizen changed the name to just the Citizen and expanded into new markets. Using the name Chronom Master might have been a legal issue outside of Japan, like Zenith has a Chronomaster collection. So, this watch is a Citizen, the Citizen, or a the Citizen by Citizen. I don't know. In a world where search engines are how people find things, this branding isn't great. But that really doesn't take anything away from the watch.
$4,000 with a 38mm titanium, not steel, case, 12.5 mm thick, 45 mm long across the wrist with 19 mm lugs. Because of that titanium, and also partially because it uses a quartz movement, the watch weighs only 80 g on the full bracelet. That's pretty light for a metal watch with 100 m of water resistance. This Citizen, the Citizen, uses the A060 movement, which I'm going to get into because it's a very cool thing. And what happens when a highly precise, light 38 millimeter watch meets a highly calibrated, splendifferous 7in wrist? Well, let me tell you, it it fits.
38 mm is a great size for this watch that's somewhere between dressy and sporty. Somewhere around like the Omega Aquaterara or the Rolex Datejust, that kind of stylistic range. Now, I'd like to see a 40 mm version of this watch, but I think given its style, it might not be right for a lot of people. But 38 millimeters makes sense, especially that 45mimeter length.
The case and bracelet are made of Citizen's proprietary Super Titanium, which includes something called Duratech. Citizen says that the result of the Duratech treating process makes the Super Titanium five times more scratch resistant than steel. And I am so tempted to test that claim. And I do it for you, but not on a $4,000 watch that's on loan from me from a brand. Now, I'm happy to ruin a friendship if a person loans me a watch, but I'm not going to burn a bridge with a watch brand. Real relationships matter, you guys.
The case is finished very nicely, but I do think the Duratech treatment might actually kind of be muting the brushing. The brushing looks good, but almost as if there's less depth to it, and maybe that's because there's a thin layer of scratch resistant material on it. I see the same thing on the bracelet. Nice finishing, but a little shallow somehow.
Now, this dial. So, I was shocked to learn that this dial does not have some poetic name inspired by a natural wonder in Japan like the Yamanaka ice inspired by the largest lake near Mount Fuji. No, Citizen refers to this dial as quote blue. And I'm into the whole brevity thing. This dial looks great. Very vivid, glossy, but with interesting layers and patterns. But maybe the coolest thing about this dial is that it looks like this and it allows light to pass through it to charge the watch. Which brings us to the true star of the show. No, not my wrist, but the A060 movement in this watch is a very highly accurate photovoltaic perpetual calendar quartz movement.
First, let's talk about the accuracy and precision. And I make a distinction between those terms. Accurate basically means this thing is correct. Accuracy means telling the time correctly. A broken watch can be perfectly accurate for 2 seconds each day. But precise, well, a watch can be precise without telling the time correctly. It could be running perfectly with 0 seconds of deviation, but that doesn't mean it's accurate. So, technically, technically, this is the most precise watch I've ever put on my wrist because this watch is precise to plus or minus 5 seconds per year. Most quartz watches clock in at about 15 seconds per month. That's per month. And even most of the high-end quartz watches from Grand Seiko get as good as about 10 seconds per year. So, this Citizen is twice as precise and possibly twice as accurate as those Grand Seiko quartz watches. The accuracy part depends on if you set it correctly.
But this goes even further. Like I said, it's photovoltaic. It's powered by light like a plant is or a watch collector sunburn. When this is fully charged, it can run for 7 months without any additional light, which is nearly what I did during co. And then there's the perpetual calendar part. And I know some of you are wondering, how is it a perpetual calendar? It only shows the date. And now you're wondering, how did he know what I was wondering? Yes, this only shows the date, but the date is always right. The watch keeps track of the month and where we are in the leap year cycle. So during February last year 2024, the watch displayed a 29th day of the month. This year it only went to 28 days in February. There is actually a way to see and set the month and leap year cycle in this watch. And you do that by using the mini pusher around 2:00 on the side of the case. It's all pretty easy with the instructions in the manual.
And one last thing about accuracy or precision or both, I guess. The watch has a jumping hour hand that can be set while the seconds hand continues running. That means that if you travel to a different time zone, you can set the watch without messing up your carefully calibrated seconds. You can still hack the watch and stop the seconds by pulling the crown to the furthest position. The crown, by the way, is too small. It's easy enough to use, especially since this is not a mechanical watch and you don't need to wind it, but to my sausage fingers, it feels tiny. Too small and I'd prefer that it screwed down. This is not a screw down crown. Citizen says that it has 100 meters of water resistance and I believe Citizen, but I would prefer it to be safer and have a screw down crown.
See, I'm kind of struggling to find quibbles I have with this Citizen, the Citizen, because I don't have many. It's a really good-looking, well-made piece. And it houses not only the most precise movement I've ever put on my wrist, but maybe my favorite quartz movement that I've ever put on my wrist. And maybe the strongest critique of this watch from a watch collector's perspective is that it doesn't require constant intervention from us. No winding, no setting, no hacking, no date changing. It works for you and doesn't make you work for it. And that could be a negative for some collectors. But for reasonable people, this is hard to beat. [Music]