Citizen

Citizen Men's BL5345-59H Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Calendar Watch

• Precise Swiss-Quartz movement
• Mineral crystal
• Case diameter: 48 mm

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Offering a perpetual calendar that will help you stay organized, this Men's Titanium Watch #BL5345-59H from Citizen's solar-powered Eco-Drive Collection is a sleek and durable diver's style timepiece that's always ready for the next adventure. Boasting the precision of quartz movement, a sporty chronograph dial, this sleek accessory has a brushed titanium black ion plated uni-directional rotating bezel engraved with white numbers and indices. Water resistant to 660 feet, it also comes with an interactive instructional CD-Rom and five-year warranty.

The Citizen Story

The company was established in 1924. The founding fathers selected the name Citizen so it would be "Close to the Hearts of People Everywhere" and soon after adopted the company’s formal name, Citizen Watch Company.

During the last seventy-five years Citizen has expanded its business throughout the world and has achieved recognition as the global brand. The past twenty-five year period has coincided with the company’s dramatic rise to its current position as the world’s largest watchmaker, a distinction Citizen has held every year since 1986.

Beyond sheer size, Citizen is also recognized as a worldwide leader in advanced technology. From the world’s slimmest LCD watch to the first voice recognition watch and the world’s first professional dive watch with an electronic depth sensor, Citizen’s record of "world’s firsts" is unmatched.

More recently, Citizen has staked out a new position as the leader in timekeeping with its Eco-Drives watches that are light powered. With models ranging from dress models to sports models to professional dive watches, Citizen Eco-Drive runs continuously in any kind of natural or artificial light for a lifetime of use. Fueled by light, it never needs a battery.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0012IR0E8
• Item model number: BL5345-59H
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,517 in Watches (See Top 100 in Watches)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great looking watch. Lousy Functionality Design., September 30, 2009

By 

Acronator - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Men's BL5345-59H Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Calendar Watch (Watch)

Pros(Without all of these I would have given it a rating of 1 star):

1. Looks awesome. Much better in real life than in photos.

2. Has an alarm and perpetual calendar.

3. Luminous hands work really well in the dark well into the night

4. Accurate

5. Runs for a loooong time on a single charge.

6. Easy to set.

Cons:

1. Dual-time functionality is useless because the hands take forever to show time once you select L-TM(Local time) or TME(Primary time). You can go have coffee with your girl, finish all your chores for the day, finish cooking and take a small snooze before it shows you the second time.

2. Assuming you still want to use the Dual-time functionality, secondary time can only be set by a MINIMUM OF 1HR INCREMENTS/DECREMENTS RELATIVE TO YOUR PRIMARY TIME. Ex: IST - Indian Standard Time is UTC + 5hrs 30mins. So if you live in USA you just cant set the secondary time to India because US Time Zones are in 1hr Increments. There are plenty of countries which set their time by half hour increments from UTC. You can never set these as your secondary time. This is a critical design flaw of the watch.

3. The crown moves very easily. I have often caught the hands spinning wildly because the crown brushed against my clothes and changed the mode to Local Time or Chronograph.

4. Rotating bezel moves way too easily. I can never keep the 60 aligned with the 12hr marker. It is not important to me but for some it matters.

[...] I do recommend Eco-Drive watches. They are fantastic usually. But DO NOT BUY ONE WITH A E812 Movement.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great looking watch! - Chrono a bit limited, January 5, 2010

By 

Calczilla - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Men's BL5345-59H Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Calendar Watch (Watch)

I will "third" the motion that this watch looks much better in real life than it does in the photos. Not sure where Amazon got it's photos from, but there are better stock photos out there.

To the complainers about slow "2nd timezone" setting: I don't think the feature is really meant for one to say "oh, I wonder what time it is in India", and switch to L-TM mode. I think it is for when you travel. You can set the destination timezone as the L-TM time, and then switch to it easily when you get there, and switch easily back when you get home. And it takes around 2 minutes at most to set, possibly 2.5 for worst case scenario. I timed it, and to switch ahead 12 hours it took 1 minute 15 seconds.

Where this slowness *does* get annoying, at least for me, is when setting the alarm time. I've had another Citizen with the same movement, and it was the same way. It's just an annoyance that you have to get used to with this watch movement.

Some Pros not mentioned yet:

* Tachymeter - Yeah! More watches should have these

* In chronograph mode, the large second hand becomes the second hand for the chrono

* Crystal may not be sapphire but it does have a hard sound when tapped with fingernail

* Tiny reflective surfaces around the hour markers and subdials give it a slight silvery "bling" look

Some Cons not mentioned:

* Can't switch away from chrono mode while timing or chrono will reset! - Worst feature by far

* Timer bezel clicks in whole minute increments instead of much preferred 1/2 minute.

* No indication of charge level until it gets down to the danger point.

* Requires rigorous reset and 0-calibration of the hands if charge ever completely runs out.

That last one is standard for all computer-controlled watches, and not a problem at all for me, but could be for some people, especially those prone to losing their manuals. :') Not only do the hands have to be set back to their zero points, but the date has to be set back to 1. Then you can begin setting the watch to the current date & time. The previous posters didn't mention this crucial step to using the watch. Save your manual. It's naive to think that your watch will never run out of juice!

Now here's a mystery for those who own the watch: What is that red "warning" indicator just past the "5" position? It is not mentioned in the manual. The manual talks of "insufficient charge warning" indication, but that is the "charge" indicator between the 3 and the 4. It progresses from there to "stop" (just past the 4) when power depletes to critical, and from there to "set" (just before the 5) after being exposed to enough light to set the watch. The manual calls this the "time setting warning indication", and means you need to set the date & time. So what is "warning" for? My watch came stopped, with the second hand pointing to "warning". A little sunlight and I was able to do the all-clear, calibrate, and set. Just wondering what it was warning me about.

I'm going to reiterate what one poster said about removing links in the band. There are tiny cylindrical sleeves - one per link - that slide into one side of a link and create the friction that holds the pin in place. If you don't have that in place, the pin won't stay. Also, be sure to shove the pins back in, in the opposite direction that you took them out. (You take them out in the direction of the arrow.)

I like the fact that the upper-right subdial shows both minutes *and* 1/20 seconds in chrono mode. Efficient use of space. Too bad the 24 hour dial doesn't switch to 24 hours of chronograph timing. This *is* a computer-controlled watch, isn't it? The chrono should maintain its value, between modes, and use the 24 hour dial to time up to 24 hours. Are you listening, Citizen? :')

All in all, I'd recommend it if you can live with the limited chrono and the slow time adjustment. (6.25 seconds to move the time ahead 1 hour). If you can't live with it, Citizen have other Eco-drive watches that do not have that limitation. Computer-controlled watches without a second hand should not have that limitation.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Nice watch but with less usefull functionality, October 2, 2009

By 

Ashutosh - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Men's BL5345-59H Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Calendar Watch (Watch)

I purchased this watch from other site not Amazon - so my reviews are specific to the watch:

PROS:

1) Excellent looking watch - looks way better than the pic - will upload some nice pics later. It very easily catches attention and the looks. It looks very nice at night in room light too.

2) Strap is light weight - and the watch sits nicely on your wrist.

3) Set the watch once and forget it. I set the time, year, month and date. I then set the local time to match DST and I will now forget about time setting for ever. Perpetual calendar will take care of it. I will change the default to local time for DST.

4) For some time in dark the hands are very luminous.

5) Displays the 24 hour time which tells you if its AM /PM

6) Decent chronograph up to an hour.

7) 5 year warranty - this watch has to be really good looking at the confidence, Citizen has in it.

CONS:

1) Very Slow time switch over to local time - If its a country (like India) where there's a difference of a day then the hands will move hour by hour to match that time. This goes on for ever. This functionality is best suitable for time difference of a couple of hours and not a day.

2) yes - bezel moves easily.

3) I will try to come over the in-ability of setting local time of odd hours like India time - by changing the time first to match the India time and then setting India time in local time and then switching back and changing the time - I doubt it will work. but frankly speaking I don't use much of this dual time.

4) No split time in chronograph

5) No sapphire crystal at this price range

BUT: For those who don't use dual time of odd hours I think its a very good time piece. Like a collectible in this price range. Its a good sports/dress watch which does not need a battery. I fixed the links myself its easy. be careful of the inner rings in the links - they are small and you need to put them back IN when changing links.

My 4 stars are because of all the pros. I am planning to use local time for DST so it still works very fast.

Setting the watch was easier than expected. [...]