Two weeks with the Citizen Promaster Tough (model BN0118-04E)

This post is primarily pitched at women who might be thinking about buying one of these watches. Most reviews on this watch seem to be made by men with outdoor or military pretensions, feigned or real. I'm just a 74 year old woman who wanted something distinctive, solar-powered, strong, water-resistant and very easy to tell the time with. 

To be clear, I'm not fanatical about adventure and endurance, not at all, but I don't mind the image. In reality I'm a comfort-loving creature who doesn't willingly do rough unless she has to. But I do get out and around every day, because I like photography and taking lots of pictures. That can involve going to places that might pose a cosmetic threat to a fragile watch, or a fancy one that might spoil if it takes a thump. My regular caravanning holidays, all year round, often in scenic areas, with forays into characterful towns, do at any rate involve plenty of walking, and sometimes some bad weather. Stormy skies and rough seas are both within my range of photographic subjects. It could be Dartmoor or the New Forest, the Mull of Kintyre or Beachy Head. It could also be a bleak afternoon on some rain-lashed promenade in January.

After two weeks, I'm confident that this watch can cope with anything I will ever throw at it in my travels. It will also laugh at getting messy or accidentally knocked about at home. I've every expectation that it will look good, and keep working perfectly, for years to come with no attention apart from wiping it clean, resetting the time twice a year, and correcting the date seven times a year.  

I've shown plenty of watch pictures in my recent posts, so this post is in the nature of a follow-up, mostly about the straps I bought and fitted, and any quirks or issues (only two, and they don't matter). 

In the last post on my Citizen Promaster Tough, I'd just ordered a mustard-yellow nylon military-style strap from WatchGecko. The out-of-the-box strap was a dark grey heavily-stitched fabric affair that used Kevlar, the stuff that sails and paraglider wings are made of. It was fine; a bit stiff at first, but after a few hours' wear it was shaping up to be a comfortable strap. I didn't mind the very prominent metal eyelets, and one of those was just right for a good fit on my wrist. But the dark grey fabric was a bit dull. So I was going to detach it with a special tool I'd bought, and substitute a different strap in a brighter colour.

I chose yellow. It would go nicely with the watch face and many of my clothes, both normal and strictly outdoor. It would however lift the mood, so to speak. I wanted some cheer. So as soon as the delivery man came, I set to. First, taking off the old strap. It's done by releasing the watch's spring bars with that tool. It was more of a fiddle than I thought it would be, but after a few minutes I'd succeeded. I slid the bars out of the strap ends, and popped them back into their holes on the inside of the lugs. Unless I were ever going to fit a two-piece strap sometime in the future, I wouldn't need to touch those spring bars again.

I put the original dark grey strap away inside the stout envelope the yellow strap came in. I was unlikely to use it again, but it was much too good to junk. 

Now the one-piece, double-pass yellow NATO strap went on. It's Y-shaped. The longer part threads through the spring bars and under the watch, then though the end of the shorter part, then buckled up normally. 

The watch is on a separate loop. Unless both its spring bars fail simultaneously, it will stay attached to that strap loop and can't fall away into oblivion. It's for the kind of situation where one is sliding about (on a muddy slope, say) and the watch catches in something and is yanked away from the strap. Conceivably a spring bar might fail if that happened. But only one, surely. The watch would be left flapping on the wrist, but still secure. 

I think the yellow nicely adds a touch of pizzazz to the no-nonsense plainness of the watch. Perfect for meetups with friends.  

And I found the yellow strap really comfortable. It's quite thin, and easily moulds itself to both the watch and my wrist. The end of the long part is folded back on itself and tucked into one of the metal keepers. 

Why is it so long? Well, in dire weather one might wish to wear the watch over an outer sleeve, and not on the wrist. Worn thus, one wouldn't need to expose the wrist at all, if needing to know the time. It wouldn't matter to this watch if it were pelted with hail or torrential rain or heavy snow. You'd just wipe the watch face with a gloved finger and see what the time was. I'll readily agree that I'm never likely to wear the watch in this way, unless wishing to impress the tourists, and see them gasp with astonishment. Perhaps in The Lanes in Brighton. How secretly amusing that would be.

Then I bought another strap from WatchGecko, exactly the same but in grey. That looked good too.

As you can see, it isn't a contrast with the watch face. It blends with it. It's low-key - an advantage in various situations. Say the more formal occasion. But for weddings and funerals, and any scenario where I'd need to be taken really seriously (such as at a tribunal) I would get a black strap, to tone the watch down even more. 

These straps are not cheap - with delivery, it's £30+ a pop - but I may gradually build up a collection of them. Something in teal next, or perhaps a lemon yellow, or possibly purple. The thing is, these NATO straps can be swapped in and out in half a minute, and each modifies the character of the watch itself, to suit one's mood, one's outfit, or the occasion.

Back to the watch. I've so much praise for it. Its simplicity and lack of bling make me feel great when walking around a shopping centre or along a high street, when it's on my wrist and on display. The Tough is definitely different. Nobody else is wearing anything quite like it. There are diver watches around, to be sure, some of them unisex. But mostly they are way too large. Most women are wearing either a smartwatch, such as an Apple watch, Fitbit or a Garmin, or the traditional small gold watch that you can't read the time from without peering closely at it. I feel I'm bucking the convention, and being very individual.

Any issues? Two, but they don't matter. 

The date window is too small. It's OK in good light, and from the right angle, but it's still too miniscule for a quick glance. I wonder why Citizen bothered with it. It's unimportant because my phone will tell me the date, and show me my calendar. And I am never without my phone.

The other issue is seeing what the time is in darkness, such as in bed at night. Like all watches that aren't smartwatches, the Tough relies on luminous hands, which are painted with a compound that glows brightly when light is first shone at it, but fades over the hours. It can't complete with a high-contrast backlit screen, as seen on any smartwatch or fitness watch. And if you are like me, and wear glasses that you take off at night and don't want to fumble for if you wake up and want to see what the time is, then at night the Tough's glow is just a mush. I can't distinguish the hands from the ring of numerals. It ought to look like this:

But without my glasses on, it's completely out of focus. 

I have a workaround. My Garmin Vivoactive 5 fitness watch now serves as a bedside clock, and a mere sleepy finger-tap will light it up. 

The Garmin's watch hands are different colours, red for the hour, green for the minutes - I set it up that way - so even though it's also out of focus, there's no mistaking what the time is. And with only that job to do, its recharges last ten days, which is adequately convenient. 

In dim light, at dawn or at dusk, or in deep shadow - as opposed to total darkness - the Tough does very well. The very prominent numerals and hands, assisted a little by the lume, make it easy to see what time it is. With glasses on, that is.

In my researches I saw some reviewers - men of taste and distinction, one supposes - criticise those overlarge numerals and dial markings, one calling them childish, another oafish. Well, there are three reasons for their size. First, sheer visibility in awful conditions. Second, the watchface isn't solid black: it's translucent, to let the all-important light in and power the watch. The numerals and markings are big in order to stand out starkly against that not-quite-black watchface. Third, in this current version of the Tough, introduced in 2022, the water-pressure resistance rating was increased from 200 metres to 300 metres, and the bezel that clamps the crystal against the front of the watch had to be thickened, making the dial underneath the crystal smaller. That left less space for the numerals and markings, but because they stayed the same size, and were not made smaller to match the reduced dial-space, it makes them look extra-large. 

Some might see this as a design mistake, certainly a violation of aesthetic principles. I don't. Proportion must come second to readability. That, after all, is why the deliberately thick and bold lettering on road signs looks a bit odd close up. If the letters (and their spacing) were more like a well-proportioned book font, road signs would not be so readable at a distance, nor in poor visibility.

These roadside photos of mine, incidentally, date from 1989 (Broadbridge Heath in Sussex) and 2019 (Eglwyswrw in west Wales). Nowadays the mandatory speed going through the latter would be only 20 miles per hour. Thank Plaid Cymru for that.

There's nothing much more to say. I keep coming back to how individual this watch is. It's beautifully well-made. It's certainly not pretty, nor is it elegant, but then this a piece of equipment, and not jewellery. It's a hymn to functionality, unquestionably durable, and honest value for money, given its specification. And despite its plainness, it can be tricked out with colourful and easily-replaced straps. 

Furthermore, I don't think I stand much risk of being robbed for my watch: it's not trendy, nor obviously valuable. In fact, if I put a shocking pink strap on it, it might well be taken for nothing more than a kid's watch - a good disguise, if ever needed. (Sadly, its wearer doesn't look like a kid any more)