How To Set Time On Citizen Eco Drive Promaster

The Value Proffer The Denizen Eco-Bulldoze Promaster Tough

Is this the ultimate ready-it-and-forget-it wristwatch?

I've had a recurring fascination, for equally long as I can remember, with the idea of a lookout that would for all intents and purposes run forever, with perfect accuracy, more than or less without homo intervention. (In theory, anyway; in practise, I'll take "for the residuum of my natural bridge of years," of which I observe that there are fewer than at that place used to be.) This of course runs counter to the nature of watches equally machines – one-half the fun of owning a good watch is caring for it properly, after all – and for near of the history of watchmaking, a forever watch wasn't even a remote possibility; regular servicing and regular replacement of parts like mainsprings were all office of the game. In recent decades, yet, technology has started to take hold of up to the fantasy of indefinite autonomy, and while the Denizen Eco-Drive Promaster Tough is non a forever watch past any means, it comes much, much closer than any mechanical timepiece, as well as being remarkably – well, tough; just what information technology says on the can, as they say.

The Eco-Bulldoze Tough has had several incarnations (I still think the Super Tough with corking fondness, despite – or perhaps because of – its ursine heft) but the basic philosophy has e'er been the aforementioned: an analog lookout man, powered past light, in a very sturdy case, designed and engineered to tolerate corruption up to and including physical weather condition that might well prove fatal to the possessor. In this respect, it's aligned somewhat with the Grand-Shock, only the One thousand-Shock wears its toughness on its sleeve in a way the Eco-Bulldoze Tough does not, and it'due south also a multi-function LCD timepiece, which means that it has certain advantages right out of the box in terms of shock resistance. A solid-state timepiece with no moving parts other than the actuating and setting buttons leaves less to chance than an analogue quartz watch, at least from a reliability standpoint.

A 10,000 Year Clock

If you're interested in a forever lookout, how well-nigh a ten,000 yr clock? Detect out about a clock existence installed in the desert that its designers promise will run longer than human civilization has existed: The Clock Of The Long Now.

And so what attributes ought a watch to have, if it's going to be a candidate for something you could count on fifty-fifty if the time car which has taken you back to an era When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, should suffer an unfixable fault? Well, you certainly would non desire it to be mechanical were at that place any meliorate alternative; mechanical watches crave regular servicing in order to last a lifetime, and while you certainly can run a well made mechanical watch past its service interval – sometimes well past its service interval – without noticing any immediately obvious issues in timekeeping, in general it's not a skilful idea. Even the all-time made spotter, afterwards running for twenty years without attending, is apt to exist on its final legs in terms of clothing and tear (there are some exceptions – George Daniels, in his autobiography, mentions running some of his own timepieces for over a decade with fiddling to no change in charge per unit and with piffling, if any, sign of wearable but nosotros should probably not have the performance of a manus-made masterpiece by i of the greatest watchmakers of the 20th century, as a sign of what to expect from mechanical watches in general – though the idea of evading velociraptors with a Space Traveler Daniels pocket watch tucked into i's waistcoat pocket, has an undeniable, rather H. G. Wells entreatment).

However, the Eco-Drive Tough shares with the G-Stupor all the charm of a lookout man built to a singular purpose – perhaps even more than and then. What the Eco-Bulldoze Tough lacks in versatility with respect to a multifunction LCD wristwatch like the Thousand-Shock, it gains dorsum in a archetype clarity with spiritual roots in the swell simple aviation and field watches of the 20th century. And of course, simplicity has a virtue all its own in the context of a field picket – as the owner of several multifunction LCD watches, I can adjure to the fact that operation actually does generally become instinctive later a while, but there are certainly more circuitous models which you will be hard-pressed to operate without recourse to the manual).

The pattern is simplicity itself: a steel case with monocoque construction (the movement'south inserted on the dial side) 42mm in bore, and x.75mm thick; the exterior of the case is clad in Duratect, which is Citizen'due south proprietary titanium alloy and which is about 5 times more than scratch resistant than standard stainless steels. The crystal is constructed sapphire. The case exudes solidity; the screw-downwardly crown is protected by crown guards; water resistance is 200 meters and resistance to magnetism is 4800 A/m (amperes per meter). The rechargeable jail cell inside the sentinel is a potential point of concern if you're looking for a timepiece that will run indefinitely without any demand for a watchmaker's attention, but the manual for the Eco-Drive Tough says, bluntly, that "the energy cell should last for the life of the watch," which given its simple and robust structure, should exist a boringly long time.

The Eco-Bulldoze Tough is available on either a ballistic Cordura strap or on a bracelet, but I think this lookout man works improve on the strap, which feels like it was, like the movement, designed to last "for the lifetime of the watch." It's just as robustly constructed as the case and extremely comfortable. The watch example itself every bit well every bit the strap don't offer annihilation at all in terms of cosmetics (unless yous consider the minimal engraving on the instance-back cosmetic) just they certainly seem to overdeliver where it counts, in terms of durability, and of course, every bit every fan of field watches knows, pursuing an engineering goal with a focused sense of purpose can give you an artful that's all the more pure for not having been an explicit goal at all.

Night visibility is splendid, thanks to the Super-LumiNova on the easily and dial markers. Super-LumiNova was really developed by Nemoto, a Japanese company, equally a replacement for tritium-based phosphorescent paints in 1993 and it's manufactured under license in Switzerland by Tritec AG.

Is this a real "forever" watch? Information technology's non, but it comes closer probably than many, maybe most, modern watches. It'southward not a multifunction LCD lookout, so the circuitry is quite simple; the mechanical forces from the stepper motor that drives the hands are probably depression plenty that mechanical wear is a non-result for all practical intents and purposes; the power cell is said by Citizen to be good "for the life of the watch," which is a little chip similar saying that a human center is guaranteed for the life of its owner, but I take Citizen'south point (the oldest Eco-Drive sentinel I own is probably twenty years former and yet going strong – an Eco-Drive Skyhawk, if anyone's curious). The two places I'd think habiliment and tear would probably exist well-nigh noticeable and potentially problematic, are the spring confined and the LumiNova on the hands and dials. SLN has been around for shut to thirty years, and in general it seems to be quite durable and chemically stable simply exposure to the ultraviolet radiations in sunlight typically does cause chemical deterioration of the binders in paints over time – it seems reasonable to assume that repeated exposure to strong sunlight might have a deleterious effect on the lume, just to what degree I don't know.

Spring bars seem to work just fine in general and heaven knows, they concur millions of watches on millions (billions?) of wrists every day but even after all this fourth dimension I all the same tin can't bring myself to trust them completely. As I wrote several years ago, they tin't be serviced, can't exist cleaned (except for yet much cleaning you lot get out of rinsing your scout under running fresh water, which probably isn't much) and yet they practise seem to just keep on keepin' on. Yet, in a marooned-time-traveler scenario, it could be a crusade for concern.

Those two caveats aside, though, it really does seem like a hell of a lot of spotter. There is something about its absolute simplicity and rejection of whatsoever unnecessary flourishes that is positively refreshing, and despite its ruggedness, the Eco-Drive Promaster Tough seems commendably unconcerned with impressing anyone with anything. Information technology's a watch that shows merely how far the basic technology of portable timekeeping has come, and this version of the Tough has an first-class risk of becoming every bit much of a cult watch equally previous iterations. There are very few watches at whatever price that I'd feel comfortable taking on a 1-way trip through an Einstein-Rosen wormhole, but this is one of them, and especially at $340 bucks (on a strap) I think information technology's a hell of a Value Proffer.