| Product: |
Citizen Eco Drive Solar Watch |
| Date: |
11/08/00 (5219 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Needs no new batteries
Disadvantages: A bit lacking for a £100 watch
When looking for a watch that requires no new batteries there are really only two options: Kinetically charged (e.g. Seiko kinetic) or solar powered (this one).
There is a big disadvantage with the Kinetic style of watch in that the bearings that transfer the kinetic energy often need to be replaced approximately every four years. This means that the hassle of getting a new battery every so often is just replaced with the hassle of renewing the bearings. The solar powered style of watch has fewer moving parts and so is less prone to wearing out. It was for this reason that I decided on the Citizen watch.
For an analogue watch this has a healthy number of features: alarm, stop-watch and calendar. It is also very accurate and only looses about fifteen seconds per month. One problem with this being an analogue watch is that when you want to set the alarm you have to wait an age for the hands to whiz round until they display the desired time – it can take up to 2 minutes for the hands to move to show the time that the alarm is set to (it seems like hours when you’re in a rush). The watch is also quite bulky. If you are determined to get a watch that is not reliant on batteries then this is one of the best options at the moment. If, however you can put up with the hassle of battery replacement then for the money you could probably find something a bit more special.
Summary:
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Last comments:
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- 19/03/01 Going by how unreliable I am at replacing batteries this sounds good, however for the price I may as well just buy a new watch each time instead. |
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- 23/11/00 Thanks a lot for your answers.
I've been to a local store and spotted some Citizen watches with the month names written on the dial right over the hour numbers.
When asking what they were for I was handed the manual to find out myself. It turned out that this is for programming the date with month in, so that the watch will skip the date display correctly to the first at the end of every other month, except for February of leap years, of course. So, this is exactly what your watch seems to have.
What I'm wondering now though is, are there Citizen watches that DON'T have the months printed on the dial, but still have that feature? Does your watch's dial have the months printed on?
Could you tell me the model no. of your watch? You can also eMail me if that's more comfortable for you. Thanks. Oh, one more thing: can you read the dial in darkness? I don't suppose it has a light built-in. |
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- 21/11/00 This is the £100 model from the Argos catalogue (not the deluxe on in the dooyoo picture). The model has a calendar that only requires correction on leap years. Winter poses no problem unless you cange the alarm a lot (as the hands have to sweep around very fast, using up battery)- the number of times that you can do this depends on how chaged the battery is, but every day would run it out. The watch gives you plenty of warning if it is running low on power so you can stick it under a lamp or whatever (almost never required). The alarm is loud enough to hear and get your attention but probably not enough to wake you up. Hope this clears thing up. |
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