Watch Review: Citizen Promaster Land PMD56-2952

Promaster is Citizen’s higher end line of sport watches, and is broken up into Land, Sea, and Sky groups.  This is part of the Land group and is a JDM watch - meaning Japanese Domestic Market, AKA it's only sold in Japan.  Of course thanks to the internet you can buy it anywhere in the world...but you can't go to your nearest dealer and look at one unless you live in Japan.  

This is the first ‘nice’ watch I bought myself, I’ve had it for a year and a half now.  Long story short, my interest in watches went from ‘lets try it’ with a cheap Timex, to a Citizen BM8180, then to this Promaster Land.  I liked the size and style of the BM8180, but the mineral crystal and very basic movement left something to be desired after learning more about watches.

I bought the Promaster Land as my ‘one watch.’  That didn’t really last as my interest in watches deepened, but this is still my favorite watch.  We’ll get the specs out of the way first:

• Manufactuer: Citizen
• Model: Promaster Land, PMD56-2952
• Materials:
• Case: Titanium w/DuraTect treatment (DLC bezel)
• Bracelet: Titanium w/DuraTect treatment
• Crystal: Sapphire, single dome, AR treatment on inside
• Movement: H100 
• Solar powered quartz 
• Day & Date complications
• Perpetual calendar
• Radio Controlled – only picks up Japanese signal
• Anti-shock system
• Easy time-zone change feature 
• Dimensions:
• Case Size: 39.3mm
• Lug to Lug: 44.9mm
• Lug Width: 20.0mm
• Thickness: 12.0mm (including crystal)
• Weight: 87g (sized for 6.75in wrist)
• Water Resistance: 20atm/200m
• Crown: Screw down
• Other:
• Green colored lume on hands (minute/hour only) and numerals/indices
• Quick-adjust clasp on bracelet
• Price: $500 +/-

WHAT I LIKE

There’s a lot I like about this watch.  The size is great for me, it’s reasonably thin, the lug to lug is super short which is great on my skinny-ish wrist, and the case size is perfect, not too small, not too big.  I like the dial a lot.  I’m a big fan in the idea that less is more, and there’s not a lot of crap on the dial, which I like.  There’s no subdials, text is minimal, it’s just really easy to glance at it and tell the time since there’s nothing else catching your eye.  At the same time it’s interesting enough to not be boring with batons at six and nine, big inverted triangle at twelve, and the day/date at three with numerals elsewhere.  The batons/triangle/numerals all have a nice 3D look, they’re not exactly applied but the paint is thick enough they do stand up a bit.  The handset is simple, but works.  I need to do some research to see how they make the hands, I’m always impressed at how thin the second hand is yet it’s still perfectly straight and flat.  The chapter ring has a minute track as well as minute numbers and any text needed to use the watch, like when checking to see if it synced with the radio signal.  Putting all that stuff on the chapter ring is great – it’s small and unobtrusive and leaves the dial looking cleaner and less cluttered.

BM8180 on left, PMD56-2952 on right.

I like the case a lot too.  Again, like the dial, nothing super fancy going on, just nice and simple.  The black DLC bezel tricks your eye into making the watch look a bit bigger than it is, because it looks like an extension of the dial.  Citizen also makes the PMD56-2951 which is a green dial variant w/a non-DLC silver bezel and it definitely looks smaller.  I really like the way the crown guards are integrated with the case and how tightly they hug the crown.  Some crown guards look like an after thought, an add on at the end of the design phase, these look very organic.  The knurling on the crown gives it good traction when you need to work it.  The case and bracelet are entirely brushed, no polish anywhere, and finish of the case and bracelet match perfectly – something often missed IMO.

The bracelet is an oyster style bracelet, and uses pins and collars (which is the best system IMO, even if everyone else wants screws).  All the watches with bracelets I had before this (which were cheap) pulled at my arm hair.  I had started to think that was just how all bracelets were, which is why I made sure I bought a watch with standard lugs so I could put it on a strap.  Thankfully this one doesn’t pull at my arm hair, ever.  Bracelet starts at 20mm at the lugs and tapers to 18mm at the clasp.  It’s very comfy.

Let’s talk a bit about the clasp.  This is, in my opinion, the very best functioning quick adjust clasp on the market for sport watches. It's not the prettiest certainly, but from a functional standpoint there is nothing better, at any price point.  Go ahead and fight me, I'm right.  It’s not a dive extension, so the clasp itself doesn’t change size, instead the bracelet moves in/out of the clasp as you adjust it. What makes it so great, and better than those found on every other watch including some high dollar Swiss watches like the one that rhymes with Solex Rubmariners, is that you can adjust it in either direction while wearing the watch.  You don’t have to take it off your wrist, you don’t even have to open the clasp.  You can quickly, easily, and discretely adjust it any time you want to compensate for your wrist shrinking or swelling throughout the day.  A clasp that requires removing the watch to adjust is not a quick adjust, it's just an adjustable clasp.  To tighten the clasp you push the bracelet in towards the clasp.  To loosen the clasp simply push the 2^nd set of pushers to release the quick adjust mechanism.  There’s three settings with a range of 7mm total.  The light weight of titanium, unobtrusive case size, comfy bracelet, and quick adjust clasp that allows a perfect Goldilocks fit makes this watch just disappear on your wrist.

BluShark's 'British Khaki' colored AlphaShark NATO, cut down to a single pass strap and the excess length cut off.  Less is more.

Surface treatment.  DuraTect is a proprietary process Citizen applies to some of its watches that increases the hardness to make them more scratch resistant.  Titanium is known to scratch up easily and show ‘snail trails’, much more so than stainless steel.  Stainless steel commonly used in watches has a hardness in the 150-200Hv (Vickers) range.  There are a variety of DuraTect treatments, with the lowest having a hardness of 1,000-1,200Hv (DuraTect TiC) and the highest (DuraTect Alpha) having a hardness of 2,200-2,500Hv - on par with a sapphire crystal!  This watch has the lowest level DuraTect treatment, but it’s highly effective.  I’ve had this watch for a year and a half now and the bracelet and case are still pristine, only the clasp has any scratches, and many of those came from ceramic baking sheets when cleaning up after dinner.  Ceramic is very hard.

The movement has a lot of nice features.  It has an anti-shock system, automatic hand position correction, manual hand position correction, anti-magnetic to 4,800A/m, a perpetual calendar with both day and date complications, and it's solar powered so no need to worry about battery changes.  It's very close to a set and forget watch, the only thing lacking is the radio control which only works with the Japanese signal.  You can change time zones pretty easily too, without stopping time keeping, tho the switch isn't super fast.  Some watches have different motors for the hour and minute hands, this one does not, so when you advance/retard the time zone it has to spin through every minute/hour.  It also has a power save mode, if kept in the dark long enough (several days) the hands will stop at 12:00 to preserve power.  It continues to keep time internally, it just doesn't move the hands.  As soon as it sees light it 'wakes up' and spins the hands to the current time - you'll get to see this the first time you take it out of the box.  You can't check the battery level, but it does have a low charge warning - the second hand will skip every other second.

Water, shock, and flour resistant.

I think the term ‘strap monster’ is ridiculous, so I’ll just say this watch is very versatile and looks great on a variety of straps.  You can really lighten it up too by ditching the metal bracelet – on a Barton Elite Silicone strap it weights in at only 57g, that’s plastic G Shock square territory.  Some watch people think light weight makes the watch feel cheap…as a cyclist I’ve always associated light weight with higher quality however.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

There’s very little I don’t like about this watch, and it’s mostly nitpicks.  My main complaint is the radio control – it only picks up the Japanese signal.  That’s a bit of a bummer living in the US.  But, the movement is reasonably accurate (mine runs about six seconds fast per month) so it’s not like you have to adjust it often.  I use the ClockWave app on my iPhone to emulate the Japanese signal and sync the watch every couple months.  As for fit/finish complaints, there’s just a few.  The nine o’clock baton is slightly misaligned on mine, there’s a bit of orange peel in the lume paint on the triangle at twelve o’clock, and half the minute hand is slightly better lumed than the other half.

After a year and half this is pretty much the only scratches on the watch.

The second hand juuuuust barely misses the marks perfectly, but I do mean just barely.  I’m talking fractions of a millimeter, and depending on the angle you view the watch at you mostly can’t tell, this is a real nitpick.  The day and date wheels are different colors, slightly.  The day wheel is a light silver color whereas the date is white.  But, the two colors are close enough to one another you don’t really notice unless you’re looking closely.  Lastly, the time zone change works, but it's slow.

SUMMARY

It’s light, it’s small, it’s simple, it’s well made, it’s tough.  I love this watch.  It packs a lot of tech and features into a classic styled watch.  I absolutely feel like it's worth the $500 asking price.  The only thing that would make me sell it is if Citizen came out with one that picks up the US radio signal.  They do have a newer watch that is similar (CB0171-97E and it’s cousins) and does have the world wide radio signal, but it’s larger, doesn’t have the quick adjust clasp, loses the day complication, and is co-branded with Mont Bell and has a busier dial in general.   That’s too many steps back for one step forward for me, so I’ll be hanging onto mine for the foreseeable future.

FYI when I first received this watch I sent it to RandomRob to check out, you can see his video review/showcase here.

Check out the watch on the Japanese Citizen site right here.

Khaki colored Barton canvas strap.