(2024-05-13) The grand finale watch
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If I, purely hypothetically, had to lose my entire watch collection and only
remain with a single watch on my wrist, which one would it better be? This
question had been haunting me for some time and led to a point in my life
where I decided to get a timepiece that would finally end it all, at least
for as long as I live where I'm living right now.
Exiting a hobby is always hard. In my case, it was even harder as the
particular watch that I wanted to buy as the last one had been eluding me
for several weeks. The quest of obtaining this watch started on April 19 and
finally came to an end on May 7 when I got my package 5 minutes before a
thunderstorm started. The seller was quite shady as he had postponed the
delivery date for three times and insisted on an off-the-record deal to
avoid the platform fee for himself. This was enough for me, in turn, to
insist on pay-on-delivery even though I had to pay some extra for it from my
end. I decided to suffer through this deal for two reasons: 1) no one else
offered this watch in my country of residence (and the abroad logistics is
quite complicated here with our crazy import tax), 2) this is literally my
last watch purchase in the foreseeable future. So, if you've been reading my
most recent posts, you probably already know which watch I'm referring to
right now: Citizen PMD56-2951 from the JDM Promaster Land series.
Technically, it might not be as advanced as some of my other watches in the
collection. While having full auto calendar, hour offset and hand
calibration functions, it lacks any Bluetooth, GPS or optical sync features,
and, as it is indeed a Japanese domestic model, its longwave receiver only
supports JJY stations whose signal most of the world can't receive, but more
on that later. This watch, as well as pretty much any other one in the same
lineup, was designed to do one thing and do it well, and do it under any
circumstances. In fact, everything there is streamlined for maximum
efficiency: huge hands, digits and markers (with a huge amount of lume
that's visible for at least 8 hours of total darkness), a crown that's
extremely easy to grip, anti-reflective coating on the inside of the
sapphire crystal and an on-the-fly 3-step micro-adjustment system on the
bracelet. After the Certina DS Caimano Titanium with its almost non-existent
lume, thin hands, no weekday display and no micro-adjustments on the
bracelet, the contrast it makes cannot be overstated. You might argue that
the DS Caimano is a "dress watch" and the Promaster is a "field watch" but
again, real use cases are not defined by market positioning and it's hard
for me to justify anything that's not GADA by default. Besides, I have
enough "dress watches" left even after shrinking my collection in half, so I
don't feel any need to fill that particular niche, especially when having
zero occasions throughout the year where I'd want to specifically wear them.
Now, functionality-wise, there's surprisingly a lot to cover for this
particular Citizen, even though I already have one that performs almost
exactly like it — AS2050-10E — with the obvious differences of it being
DCF77-only and having no weekday display. For instance, the weekday display
in PMD56 is bilingual, the second language obviously being Japanese (kanji).
The process of manually setting the watch is not that complicated: even
though one might have to resort to poorly autotranslated manuals for the
H100 movement, it basically is the same as for the AS2050 whose movement has
manuals written in most European languages. When really necessary, one can
quickly figure it out. At least, for almost a week of usage, I haven't had
any problems with operating this watch whatsoever, and with hands alignment
either — even the second hand hits every marker, although it doesn't reach
them, but I can forgive this here because they are placed onto a non-flat
inset around the dial rather than the dial itself. As for the accuracy
between synchronizations, the H100 movement is said to keep 15 seconds per
month deviation at most but, from what I've already seen throughout 6 days,
it's gonna be closer to 3 seconds per month _at most_ for my particular
watch. I'll keep you updated in June about this.
For me though, the most important and not so obvious feature in both AS2050
and PMD56 is the hour offset setting, which is called "time difference" in
European Citizen manuals: neither of these two watches officially support
timezones (those that do also implement fractional zones like the ones for
India and Nepal) but they allow to specify the offset from the reference
radio signal they support in order to keep the correct time upon reception,
as this reception can span across multiple regions. E.g. on AS2050-10E the
reference point is the Central European time (UTC+1 or UTC+2 depending on
whether it's summer or not) observed in Germany, and on PMD56, the reference
point is JST (UTC+9). So, as I'm located in a region where DCF77 still can
be received but my time is an hour ahead, I set the time difference to +1 to
not get in trouble with my AS2050, and I set the time difference to -6 on
the PMD56 to match my summer time relative to JST, and now can use my own
JJY emulator (or whatever I find) to sync proper JST time and still display
my local one. And yes, this is the only purpose of this function, it has no
use in the places where the longwave signal can't be received or emulated,
so I don't know why people still think this is somehow related to timezones
in any way and complain it doesn't support the fractional offsets it was
never meant for. If you use PMD56 in a place with a fractional timezone and
want to emulate the signal, just set this offset to zero and make your
emulator send whatever time you need. Speaking of which, I'm already in the
middle of porting my own JJY.js (aka "Fukushima") JJY40 sync library/webapp
to Python 3. It transmits the signal on the third harmonic via the audio
output. I'm going to dedicate a separate phlog post to it when it's ready
because longwave emission with non-radio circuits is an interesting topic on
its own.
Functionality, however, isn't everything when it comes to a watch. This
Citizen just looks and feels premium, which might seem strange because it's
not even that expensive, basically cheaper than Casio GM-B2100BD and even
the aforementioned GMW-B5000D (where it's still being sold). Yet it's built
out of much better materials and with better finishing than those two. Not
surprising, by the way, considering that the Promaster Eco-Drive lineup is a
direct high-end G-Shock competitor within Japan. I'm saying "Promaster
Eco-Drive" because there also are mechanical Promasters which are honestly
beyond my interest as they tend to be much bulkier. Indeed, just like a
G-Shock, PMD56 offers 20 bar WR rating (the screw-down crown facilitates
that, as well as zero need for battery replacement for every 20 or even 40
years) and a shock protection system for the movement. The difference is, it
doesn't compromise on the looks and uses the materials that only much more
expensive G-Shocks are using: all-titanium casing, titanium bracelet and a
_domed_ sapphire crystal. The dial is not purely green, but a gradient from
field green under a direct bright light down to charcoal dark grey in the
darker conditions, and I love that transition. The overall look is much more
impressive on the wrist than on any photo you could possibly see around
there. It looks so good that I even ditched the idea of getting a PMD56-2952
as well, which has a pure-black dial but a yellow second hand and a black
PVD-coated bezel as opposed to matte titanium here just like the rest of the
watch case. The case itself, by the way, is quite compact, and the general
diameter (without the crown) doesn't exceed 40 mm for sure, and the
lug-to-lug distance doesn't exceed 45. Just what I needed.
So, where do I go from here? Is my interest in watches fading away after
getting my hands on this ultimate artifact? Heck no. I'm still interested in
watch-related news, reviews and discussions, as well as supplementary topics
like watch straps/bracelets or longwave/Bluetooth/optical synchronization.
It's just that my personal search for a perfect watch is over for now. There
*might* be some "evolutionary" upgrades to my collection, e.g. if I also
find a Casio MRG-B5000 for a reasonable price to replace my GMW-B5000 with a
titanium counterpart, or a titanium Seiko chronograph to replace my
SSB401P1, or a hypothetical titanium mech diver from Orient to replace my
Kamasu, but all that is highly unlikely. And the main reason for this is
because Citizen PMD56-2951 really answers the first question I've asked in
this post: if I ever have to leave a single watch only, however I love the
rest of my collection, this one will be the watch that's going to stay.
