Citizen Eco-Drive Promaster SST

[TonyD]

This is the latest addition to the stable. It’s a bit different than my other watches which is why I love it. It’s a little weird looking but pretty functional.

For those that don’t know the Citizen Eco-Drive series of watches have tiny solar panels underneath the dial that capture sunlight and charge a small battery or capacitor. The watch will never need a battery and should run forever. I believe it will run for several weeks in complete darkness. If the battery gets low it shuts down the hands so they don’t move and I believe it kills the display as well until you put it in sunlight. Nice power saving features.

I’m not sure how its done since the dial looks “normal”. I imagine it has tiny pin holes in it. Perhaps later I’ll look up and reference some articles about the actual workings. I’m curious since I design machinery that builds household solar panels.

The watch itself is very comfortable to wear. Its wide but not very thick and not too heavy at all. The stainless bracelet is comfortable but it lacks a micro adjustment feature. You have to remove links or half links to size it. The clasp does not have any holes in it for small or quick adjustments, which I find puzzling. Also note that although the bracelet is pretty large, the end link is very small with a 16mm opening. I mounted the watch on a cheap nylon/Velcro band just to try it out and it was hard to find one that had a small end, but thick band. I’ll try and snap a pic of it so you can see what I mean.

The dial is pretty busy but I can clearly see the necessary info. The outer bezel is not as nice as a Breitling but the conversions of distance and volume might be useful for a pilot. Being an engineer I can normally convert this stuff in my head or I know the conversion factors and I calculate the values exactly on my phone’s calculator. I certainly wouldn’t use it to calculate fuel reserves if I were a pilot!

The main functions are accessed via the small button on the left side that changes the “mode” in the digital window. It has the typical digital modes including the month/day/year screen, an alarm mode, second time zone, chronograph and countdown timer. The crown has only one function, it can be pulled out. This enters the watch into a “setting” mode only. Turning the crown doesn’t do anything. For example you set the time by pulling the crown out in the date screen. You then set the time by using the up and down buttons on the right side and moving between minutes and the hours with the button on the left. Once you set the time digitally you push the crown down and the analog hands advance to the time you set. It’s a little weird but kind of cool.

The sub dials are less useful than other watches. The left dial at 10 o’clock is a minute totalizer for the chrono. Its very small and difficult to read with only graduations at 30 and 60 minutes. Pretty useless. The digital display shows it very clearly so the analog is not needed. The main feature of the watch is the center chrono analog display. This center dial has two hands on it. You select the chrono mode with the mode button and activate the stopwatch with the buttons on the right side. These are very large buttons like a real stopwatch and should yield very accurate timings. Using the lower button you can capture a series of split times.
During chronograph operation the center dial has an extremely amusing display. The small hand sweeps one full revolution every second. It has 10 graduations on the dial so you can read off tenths of seconds. The other hand rotates 10 full revolutions per second! When the chrono is activated the hand jumps and spins at an insanely fast rate. It strobes slightly to create the faint impression of 10 hands on the dial all spinning wildly. Hit the stop button and the hand snaps to a stop to read off hundredths of seconds. Again, it really isn’t easy to read and I can’t imagine it would be super accurate but the display is amusing as heck and I play with it in meetings. The digital display actually has 4 digits showing thousandths of seconds as well.

The right hand sub dial at 2 o’clock is a 24 hour hand that shows the main time zone. Again, its pretty useless because the dial is so small. It basically serves at a 24 hour day/night indicator.

The lume is pretty good but not amazing. In all fairness I have never found any watch to have great lume that is useful in real life. Even my Deep Sea, which has insane lume if you put it under a lamp and then turn off the lights. If you go to a movie and then 2 hours into it you want to see the time, I can’t see it clearly. The theater creates enough light to wash it out and the lume has dimmed over the last few hours.

This watch has a built in backlight so I was excited that it would help me read the time in the dark. Unfortunately its also pretty useless. Take a look at the image of the backlight below. It has a cool red tint to it which again looks pretty cool. It isn’t the clearest or easiest thing to read in the dark with black numbers on a red backdrop. Also the backlight only illuminates the digital display so you have to rely on the lume on the hands to get the actual time. I think that’s kind of silly because why would I hit the backlight to check the date?

So overall this is a mixed bag. I think it looks cool and will serve me well as a beater watch to wear when I travel and don’t want to wear anything I would be afraid to lose or have stolen. The second time zone works well since its displayed clearly in the digital window. Right now my wife is in San Diego so I have CA time on the lower display. The chrono is a bit weird with the .0001 second accuracy but the buttons are better than any watch chrono I have ever used.

These aren’t cheap, listing for $695 but they are typically on sale at department stores for 25-30% off every week. I found this one at a local jeweler having a yearly 45% off inventory clearance and since I had my eye on it for a while I went for it. Sorry for the stock pics but my wife has the camera. I can add more shots later if anyone is interested.

BTW I am an engineer and work with lots of engineers and technicians who build machinery. There are at least a dozen Citizen Eco-Drive watches around here. I think its because we are a solar company and also because nerds like us like toys to play with. They are all big and chunky with lots of dials and buttons to play with!

[vitix]

Originally Posted by TonyD

This is the latest addition to the stable. It’s a bit different than my other watches which is why I love it. It’s a little weird looking but pretty functional.

For those that don’t know the Citizen Eco-Drive series of watches have tiny solar panels underneath the dial that capture sunlight and charge a small battery or capacitor. The watch will never need a battery and should run forever. I believe it will run for several weeks in complete darkness. If the battery gets low it shuts down the hands so they don’t move and I believe it kills the display as well until you put it in sunlight. Nice power saving features.

I’m not sure how its done since the dial looks “normal”. I imagine it has tiny pin holes in it. Perhaps later I’ll look up and reference some articles about the actual workings. I’m curious since I design machinery that builds household solar panels.

The watch itself is very comfortable to wear. Its wide but not very thick and not too heavy at all. The stainless bracelet is comfortable but it lacks a micro adjustment feature. You have to remove links or half links to size it. The clasp does not have any holes in it for small or quick adjustments, which I find puzzling. Also note that although the bracelet is pretty large, the end link is very small with a 16mm opening. I mounted the watch on a cheap nylon/Velcro band just to try it out and it was hard to find one that had a small end, but thick band. I’ll try and snap a pic of it so you can see what I mean.

The dial is pretty busy but I can clearly see the necessary info. The outer bezel is not as nice as a Breitling but the conversions of distance and volume might be useful for a pilot. Being an engineer I can normally convert this stuff in my head or I know the conversion factors and I calculate the values exactly on my phone’s calculator. I certainly wouldn’t use it to calculate fuel reserves if I were a pilot!

The main functions are accessed via the small button on the left side that changes the “mode” in the digital window. It has the typical digital modes including the month/day/year screen, an alarm mode, second time zone, chronograph and countdown timer. The crown has only one function, it can be pulled out. This enters the watch into a “setting” mode only. Turning the crown doesn’t do anything. For example you set the time by pulling the crown out in the date screen. You then set the time by using the up and down buttons on the right side and moving between minutes and the hours with the button on the left. Once you set the time digitally you push the crown down and the analog hands advance to the time you set. It’s a little weird but kind of cool.

The sub dials are less useful than other watches. The left dial at 10 o’clock is a minute totalizer for the chrono. Its very small and difficult to read with only graduations at 30 and 60 minutes. Pretty useless. The digital display shows it very clearly so the analog is not needed. The main feature of the watch is the center chrono analog display. This center dial has two hands on it. You select the chrono mode with the mode button and activate the stopwatch with the buttons on the right side. These are very large buttons like a real stopwatch and should yield very accurate timings. Using the lower button you can capture a series of split times.
During chronograph operation the center dial has an extremely amusing display. The small hand sweeps one full revolution every second. It has 10 graduations on the dial so you can read off tenths of seconds. The other hand rotates 10 full revolutions per second! When the chrono is activated the hand jumps and spins at an insanely fast rate. It strobes slightly to create the faint impression of 10 hands on the dial all spinning wildly. Hit the stop button and the hand snaps to a stop to read off hundredths of seconds. Again, it really isn’t easy to read and I can’t imagine it would be super accurate but the display is amusing as heck and I play with it in meetings. The digital display actually has 4 digits showing thousandths of seconds as well.

The right hand sub dial at 2 o’clock is a 24 hour hand that shows the main time zone. Again, its pretty useless because the dial is so small. It basically serves at a 24 hour day/night indicator.

The lume is pretty good but not amazing. In all fairness I have never found any watch to have great lume that is useful in real life. Even my Deep Sea, which has insane lume if you put it under a lamp and then turn off the lights. If you go to a movie and then 2 hours into it you want to see the time, I can’t see it clearly. The theater creates enough light to wash it out and the lume has dimmed over the last few hours.

This watch has a built in backlight so I was excited that it would help me read the time in the dark. Unfortunately its also pretty useless. Take a look at the image of the backlight below. It has a cool red tint to it which again looks pretty cool. It isn’t the clearest or easiest thing to read in the dark with black numbers on a red backdrop. Also the backlight only illuminates the digital display so you have to rely on the lume on the hands to get the actual time. I think that’s kind of silly because why would I hit the backlight to check the date?

So overall this is a mixed bag. I think it looks cool and will serve me well as a beater watch to wear when I travel and don’t want to wear anything I would be afraid to lose or have stolen. The second time zone works well since its displayed clearly in the digital window. Right now my wife is in San Diego so I have CA time on the lower display. The chrono is a bit weird with the .0001 second accuracy but the buttons are better than any watch chrono I have ever used.

These aren’t cheap, listing for $695 but they are typically on sale at department stores for 25-30% off every week. I found this one at a local jeweler having a yearly 45% off inventory clearance and since I had my eye on it for a while I went for it. Sorry for the stock pics but my wife has the camera. I can add more shots later if anyone is interested.

BTW I am an engineer and work with lots of engineers and technicians who build machinery. There are at least a dozen Citizen Eco-Drive watches around here. I think its because we are a solar company and also because nerds like us like toys to play with. They are all big and chunky with lots of dials and buttons to play with!

excelent watch!!! i own a couple of Eco Drives and they are beautiful

[JBat]

Nice write-up. I have this Eco-Drive Minute Repeater that I like a lot.

It has a retrograde perpetual date indicator, indicates which year of the leap year cycle you are in, and has a fully functional minute repeater complication, which is quite cool and works very well.

Citizen makes some interesting pieces at an affordable price.