Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive Diver 300m with 365-Day Power

At this point, unless there is a significant innovation, the battle between quartz movements and mechanical ones feels like it will forever be a stalemate. Mechanical watch fans can always fall back on the immense skill that it takes to produce mechanical watches, the engineering finesse, visual dynamics and romance of clockwork. Meanwhile a quartz enjoyer simply has to mention the idea of a power reserve and accuracy to blow mechanical watches out of the water. Case in point, the new Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive Diver 300m.

The Professional Diver 300m is equipped with the Cal.E365, a solar powered movement with a charge reserve of 365-days. Meaning that at full charge it can power the watch for a full year without additional charging. An impressive power reserve for a mechanical watch is 5-7 days, approximately 300 less than the Citizen. In terms of practicality and ease of use, it’s impossible to compare. Not to mention that quartz watches operate at a much higher frequency than mechanical watches ensuring accuracy that deviates at a rate of seconds per month instead of seconds per day.

As for the case, the Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive Diver 300m is a giant in the same vein as watches like the Seiko Tuna. It measures 46mm in diameter with a thickness of 16.3mm. A level of enormous that hasn’t really been popular since the late 2000s and early 2010s and it would still have been considered on the bigger side by those standards. Plus, in stainless steel it is a hefty chunk of metal. Fortunately underwater the weight of a watch is less impactful and the Citizen has a 300m water resistance rating, as stated in the watch’s name.

Style-wise, it has a broad bezel with pronounced grip and the crown is positioned at 4 o’clock. Nestled inside the bezel is the 60-minute scale on the dial’s flange and then the dial itself with a red-black vertical gradient. It looks quite cool as you don’t often see gradient red dial dive watches due to the overwhelming popularity of blue. It’s equipped with oversize hour markers to provide plenty of legibility too.

The Citizen Promaster Eco-Drive Diver 300m is priced at £499, which makes sense for the sheer amount of metal involved alone. Plus, the movement isn’t exactly a run of the mill quartz number, showcasing Japan and Citizen’s mastery of that technology. It’s not a watch for me personally but if you have the wrists for it and fancy something a tough as you are, here it is.

More details at Citizen.

​Oracle Time 

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