(2024-05-13) The grand finale watch ----------------------------------- 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. --- Luxferre ---