The Perfect Watch?

After 15 years, my search for the perfect watch ended in January. In a weak moment during an otherwise enjoyable Caribbean cruise, my wife talked me into getting a Citizen Eco-Drive. After years of looking at the Rolexes, Breitlings, Tag Heuers, Movado etc. costing much more, so why did I buy Citizen?

The Eco-Drive is solar powered, so it never needs batteries which always annoyed me every few years paying $20 or more to change batteries on my Sector watch. It has a larger face, allowing me to tell time with my diminishing eyesight. The watch is warrantied for use at 200 meters depth; my Sector was good to 300 meters (if I found myself at these depths, I would be crushed but my watch would continue working). So it works in all weather conditions; so far so good.

The best part of all about owning this watch (other than the fact that it costs a fraction) though is that it keeps perfect time in 24 time zones! With a perpetual calendar maintained by syncing to a remote tower located in Colorado (and various places worldwide), the watch with its built in calendar maintains accurate time and date. When the month shifted to March, I waited to see if the date would be maintained. Sure enough at close to the stroke of midnight, the date moved inexorably from 28 to 1. When the seasons changed and we moved to standard time in Spring, sure enough, the watch hands move appropriately forward one hour. If one wears a watch strictly to keep time, its the perfect watch.

Now, the watch has a knob on the crown with which you can use to tell if the watch is connected to a syncing tower. It doesn’t need to be connected all the time and I don’t know when one decides to sync up all the Citizen perpetual calendar watches in the world but it’s there for the owner to verify it’s working.

Because although the Citizen may be the perfect watch, this citizen unfortunately is not.