Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10413 in Watches
• Brand: Citizen
• Model: BL5295-55E
• Dimensions: .15 pounds
• Band material: black-plated-stainless-steel
• Bezel material: black-ion-plated-stainless-steel
• Case material: black-plated-stainless-steel
• Clasp type: fold-over-clasp-with-double-push-button-safety
• Dial color: black
• Dial window material: Mineral
• Movement type: japanese-quartz
• Water-resistant to 330 feet

Features

• Ecologically friendly, light powered Eco-Drive Caliber E812 Japanese-quartz movement; Charges in natural sunlight or indoor light
• Max power reserve: 120 - 270 days with Power Save; Low charge warning: 5 days; Charge time from stop state to max charge: Incandescent Light - 43 hrs, Outdoors, Cloudy (10,000 Lux) - 12 hrs, Outdoors, Sunny (100,000 Lux) - 4 hrs
• Durable, hardened non-reflective mineral crystal; Case diameter: 44 mm; 1/20 second chronograph measures up to 60 minutes; 12/24 hour time with 24-hour subdial; Dual-time function
• Black ion-plated stainless steel case and matching bracelet; Black dial; Perpetual-calendar function; Alarm function; Screw-back case; Unidirectional rotating bezel; Date function at 4 o'clock
• Water-resistant to 330 feet (100 M)

Amazon.com Product Description
The Eco-Drive Perpetual Calendar infuses a black dial and bezel with precise functionality. Features include black ion plated stainless steel case and bracelet, one-way rotating elapsed-time bezel, which reveals the hours, minutes, and seconds on luminous hands and markers, date indicator, 12/24 hour time, 1/20 second chronograph which measures up to 60 minutes, dual time, alarm and a superior water resistance of 330 feet (100 meters).

Summary of Features:

• Perpetual calendar
• 1/20 second chronograph measures up to 60 minutes
• 12/24 hour time
• Dual time
• Alarm
• Unidirectional rotating elapsed-time bezel
• Non-reflective mineral crystal
• Screw-back case

The Citizen Watch Brand

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 Ecologically Friendly 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.

Eco-Drive Frequently Asked Questions (See the full Citizen Eco-Drive FAQ here)

How can you tell if the Eco-Drive watch is getting enough light?
In normal use, the watch displays the time and the sweep-second hand moves in one second intervals. A very important feature of Eco-Drive is the Low Charge Warning Mode which as a result of low battery voltage, causes the second hand to jump two seconds at a time (while still keeping correct time).

How long will an Eco-Drive watch run after it is fully charged?
If your watch is put away where no light is available to it while in a fully charged state, depending on the model, it will run for from 45 days to 5 years.

How can the Eco-Drive watch be recharged?
Besides sunlight, it can be safely charged by exposing it to a fluorescent desk lamp, with the dial (face) up and within about 8 inches or an incandescent lamp (regular light bulb) no closer than 20 inches. Never use a halogen lamp since the heat generated by it can cause damage to your watch. The most efficient and the quickest is in direct bright sunlight (not windowsill) and never on the dashboard of a car.

Customer Reviews

Good, could have been much better
This is a good watch: solar powered, packed with functionality, and the black looks really good. You can read the pros of the watch in reviews of BL5180-57L (which uses the same movement), so I will not repeat them here. Instead, I will share with you my frustrations with the design.

1. Dual-time requires mode switching. There is no way to check time in the other zone with a quick glance; you have to switch modes (see point #2). If only we could make the 24-hour sub-dial display the hour in the second time zone (like Nighthawk) there would be no need for separate TME and L-TM modes! (Yes, this requires an additional motor, and I would have gladly paid for that. See also point #3.)

2. The features are not quickly accessible. You need to switch modes to access different features, and that can take literally minutes waiting for the hands to finish spinning. Minutes to change alarm settings? To see the second time zone? I don't have that kind of patience.

3. Chronograph maxes out at one hour. They could have used the 24-hour sub-dial to indicate chrono hours (requires the same additional motor as #1). It would not be too bad if the chronograph just keep running after rolling back to zero; I can remember which hour I started timing. Instead it stops and switches displayed time to TME (even if it was in L-TM, why?). Oh, and chronograph resets when you switch to either of the time modes (TME or L-TM).

4. Alarm only in TME time. Suppose you travel from US East Coast to Japan. No problem, you use TME for time at home and set L-TM time to local time in Japan (easily done by design). Now you want to wake up at 7am. You cannot set the alarm to 7am; you have to set it to the US East Coast time when it will be 7am in Japan. We use local time for our daily schedule, why should the alarm be different?

I still think that this is a nice watch. But it would be so much better if the designer at Citizen had used more common sense and made better use of the (currently quite useless) 24-hour sub-dial.

Citizen Watch
This is a great watch at a great price and it was delivered faster than I expected.