First and foremost - big shout out to David for helping me get into this watch. I wouldn't have been able to get this watch without him. Thank you as always!!!


I got the Citizen AT9010 52E PCAT (pic in the Watch thread in the Gallery).

It's rather pricey (for me) but it had many of the features I wanted: Solar, Atomic, easy read hands / face, subtle, water resistant, self luminosity. As a bonus, it supports a dual time zone with a second dial. I bought this thinking it will be my everyday watch for the next 20 years.

As a time piece, it seems fantastic. 10 minutes with the manual and I was good to go. I like it a lot - been admiring it for the past 6 hours or so. I'm anal about having my clocks / watches all matching and exactly aligned with the atomic clocks. So having this atomic function for time setting to the second and especially for the dates which I can never get right (seems like I'm adjusting that every month) is fantastic.

Overall - very happy with this rather hefty time piece. And switching the hands between primary and dual dials when traveling is a click of the button.

A couple of areas for improvement for those who might consider something similar:

1) the luminosity brightness is good. Hands, even markers and the second dial hands. However, the duration seems poor; I'll test more tonight but it seems to become unreadable in the dark very quickly (1 hour?) while my Promaster dive watch remains readable throughout the night (albeit dim by morning).

2) the second time zone is a 24hour dial; I was confused at first until I looked at the numbers closely. I understand why 24hour might make sense but for my purposes, I think I would prefer a 12hour dial.

3) It has an audible alarm function but it seems useless. It's only loud if you're in a room and you're trying to hide from a killer who just walked in. In any room with any ambient noise, the alarm is inaudible. I could do w/o this feature I think.

Again, all told, hefty, quality watch with great time keeping capabilities. The one thing that may drive me to a different watch someday may be the duration of luminosity. On days when I expect to be in the dark for an extended time, perhaps the Promaster will be more appropriate to wear (although it's only solar and not atomic).

Quick update from overnight.

I was mistaken - the PCAT lume does last throughout the night. It is dimmer than the Promaster diver but it's readable all night.

There doesn't appear to be lume in dim light situations relative to the Promaster; but in pitch back darkness, the hands and markers are readable.

This watch may be the keeper for me. Finally, I may have found one of my 'holy grails.'