You know who we’ve not reviewed here in quite some time? Citizen, that’s who. Today, we’ll have a look at a rather intriguing model in their collection, the Perpetual Chrono A-T.
By it’s name alone, you can tell some of the functionality in play – a chronograph and a perpetual calendar. A closer look at the dial will reveal the other technology tricks up its sleeves – solar powered, and atomic clock syncing. Let’s have a quick run-down of the dial:
- At 10 o’clock, you’ve got a 24 hour indicator
- At 2 o’clock, the subdial can indicate: chrono minutes
sub-seconds, charge level, or day of the week - At 6 o’clock, this will set the radio you sync with, as well as indicate if you’re in timekeeping, chrono, or alarm modes
I will admit, many of the atomic syncing watches, especially those with analog dials, can be complex to operate (I’ve got one in my collection I have to carry a cheat sheet for). With this Citizen, though, it’s very simple to get the hang of, and the subdials clearly indicate what you’re doing.
And for the solar powered side of the watch, this is just a great function to have in a quartz timepiece. The Citizen can charge under a variety of lighting sources; once fully charged, it will remain so for up to 370 days. Of course, sunlight will work best to get things topped off.
At 42mm, this isn’t an overly large watch by current standards, and it wears well. Though the crown is not a screw-down variety, you will still have 200m water resistance; you also pick up a sapphire crystal in the bargain.
At an MSRP of $575 (product page), or less on Amazon, this is a compelling purchase. With the solar charging and atomic clock syncing, this is about as trouble-free of a watch you could hope for; this particular model will work well in a variety of settings with it’s size and styling.
Pretty bad review of a pretty amazing watch. The watch has an alarm (that’s what ALM in the bottom subdial stands for). You select the ALM mode and the hands on the watch move to show the alarm time, then you can set it for AM or PM (shown by the location of the 24 hour hand in ALM mode).
Also all those time zones are all in the US save for London, so if you travel outside of North American time zones, you can set the alternate time zone (A-TM) to Beijing for example so its easily accessible.
Oh and the 2 o clock subdial shows minutes, not seconds in the chrono mode.
I’m too lazy to hit up WUS or elsewhere to find out at the moment….so I figured I’d ask here: Is this one cased outside Japan (my suspicion)? I see Japan mov’t on the dial…and that usually means it’s not “Made in Japan”. Call me crazy but that’s a deal breaker for me when it comes to Seiko or Citizen.
Only real problem with this is in A-TM mode. The watch is not atomic precise in this mode. Defeats the purpose while traveling overseas.
After popping into a jewellery shop to buy my wife a present, I noticed one of these watches. As I waited while the staff was wrapping my wife’s present I began making serious enquiries about this Citizen watch. A few weeks previously, a nice solar powered Seiko of mine stopped. I tried all types of ideas to get the Seiko working again. I took it to a different jewellery shop and had a young lady who had done service on my other watches. She found nothing wrong with the watch and suggested that I call Seiko. In less than five minutes I was informed that Seiko would do nothing about my dead watch. I decided then and there that I would never buy another Seiko watch. Never. Ever.
So, Citizen became my go to watch fire my better watches. I did buy some other watch brands; Hugo Boss, Pancras, et cetera. Back to my Citizen.
The more I heard about the watch the more I liked it. Naturally, I Googled it and discovered more and more excellent reviews. Then, the sales person made his master stroke: he brought the price down to under 400.00, and that was it. As I later found out, the sales guy needed another sale to reach his quota. With out making that sale, he would not be paid his commission. Also, the watch was the last one in their shop. All of those factors lined up and I ended up with a very nice Citizen watch. In order to set my watch the way I wanted it.I was involved in amateur automobile racing and I wanted to keep track of my lap times. I called Citizen and a very nice young woman assisted me for the next 45 minutes seeing up my watch. She was exceptional in helping me. That got me to be very loyal to Citizen. I now have 3 Citizen watches, though this watch is my favourite of them.
At this point, my wife bought me my James Bond Omega Seamaster with sword hands and a black face. I wear that Omega so the time, unless l’m driving on a race track, then I wear this Citizen watch.