Citizen Men's JR3080-51L Eco-Drive Blue Angels Watch

The watch provides: nearly instantly, the time/date in most of the 24 time zones of the world by referencing the major city in each region; three alarms; stop watch; count down timer; circular slide rule marked, in part, for general aviation use; analog display UTC/Zulu; & an analog 24 hour display for the time zone selected. A great watch for people who in part or whole: travel extensively (into other time zone); don't enjoy changing or paying for watch batteries; can use a slide rule; & can & will follow the multi-step process for setting the watch for use. The Skyhawk requires an user to spend sometime & effort to: set the hands to "zero"; the time & date (in only one time zone, other time zones are slaved to the one being changed); Day Light Savings Time (in multiple time zones); & the watch band to the proper length. I owned a battery powered Citizen Navihawk (which required almost as much initial effort & time to set it for use). After the initial work, I did not need to make any changes to the watch but for DST & when flying into new times zones. Changing the time & date when flying from WA to Australia or MN to the Arabian Gulf required only a few inputs. It provided seven years of superior service. Although operational until the battery died, my previous terrible experience w/ getting a new battery provided motivation to buy the solar powered Skyhawk. Similiar to the Navihawk, the Skyhawk employs a similar input & output format & as large an instruction manual. However, Citizen now provides a CD for use in a PC that outlines, in excruciating detail, how to properly set up the watch. Once a user completes the initial setup, the watch will provide impressive results for years. Also, the user can take some minor pleasure from completing the instructions from the manual/CD. To avoid having to reset the watch (& going through the intial setup again), when not worn, the owner should insure light from some source strikes the photovoltaic cells on the face of the watch. Note, to change the watch band length requires either specific instruments/tools for removing & replacing the band pins or a jeweler. A step back for consumers.UPDATE:Seven years after my initial recommendation I increased the rating from four to five stars. No problems to date!

I purchased this watch because I wanted a solar-powered watch with analog-digital display (plus the usual things that go with a digital watch, i.e. alarms, stopwatch, and countdown timer). The only analog-digital solar watches I found included the Citizen Skyhawk, Citizen Sailhawk (JR4000 and JR4010), Citizen JR0006 (discontinued, but still available on some sites), the Casio atomic WVA430xxx (there are several incarnations, thus the 'x's'), Casio WVA510x, Casio AWS90x, and the Casio PAG60 line (watches that sport barometer, thermometer, and compass functions). The Casios (those I could find in stores) all seemed rather bulky and "plasticky." The discontinued JR0006 had a more primitive power management system and lacked a coordinated analog and digital display, and I didn't need the Sailhawk's yacht racing timer. I went with the Skyhawk in stainless, because I had read that titanium was more prone to surface injuries and I didn't think the weight would be a problem. The watch looks great and, indeed, the weight doesn't bother me, even though my benchpressing limit is probably about 20 pounds. The power save function really works. A moment after I took it out of the box, the hands started to spin around until they came to the right time; it had kept the time correctly for however many months or years it had been sitting in that box! It is NOT true, as many people have written, that this watch lacks luminous coatings, or that they lose their glow very quickly. The coatings seem very similar in brightness to those on my Seiko Diver's watch (which are very bright), and remain visible all night long. However, it IS true that the luminous regions are very small in area, so the overall impression is that the watch is a bit dim at night. The circular slide rule on the bezel is very cute. I'm not going to need it to calculate fuel consumption, but I will use it to calculate tips. There are a few things, however, that make this watch less than perfect. First, as others have observed, the watch face is attractive, but not particularly readable. The 24 hour and UTC subdials are adorable, but I can't see that I will ever need either (for any application that requires UTC, I would want to read the time off the more accurate digital display), and if the subdials weren't there the minute marks could have been made larger and more readable. Second, there's no backlight for the digital display, so the digital functions are useless at night. (Casio somehow manages to have a backlight in their solar-powered watches.) Third, it only works with full-hour time zones, so the watch isn't going to work properly in those parts of the world with half-hour time zones. Fourth, in most modes the two buttons are given over to the change-time zone function. If you want to do things like set the alarm or the countdown timer, you have to fiddle with the crown. But the crown is so beautifully protected that you pretty much have to remove the watch from your wrist before you can manipulate it. Frankly, I might need to change time zones once every couple of months, but I need to set alarms a couple of times a day, and it would have been better if the commonest operations had been the easiest to perform. Fifth, the countdown timer only goes to 99 minutes, which is too short for a lot of timer applications. The timer function display is actually redundant; Citizen might have been able to make better use of the LCD display to allow one to set countdown times in hours and minutes. Sixth, the alarm is very quiet. It won't wake anyone from sleep, and probably won't be heard in a noisy environment, either. In contrast, the alarm on my old Timex Expedition is many times louder, goes into a more insistent mode if ignored, and repeats after an interlude of a few minutes if not cancelled. In sum, buy this watch if you want an attractive analog-digital, solar-powered watch, but recognize that there is a lot of room for improvement, and something better is bound to come out, someday.

I love my Skyhawk. It's almost the perfect watch.I bought my first Skyhawk in Tokyo, at the legendary Akihabara. It was a titanium model, and it quickly became my only watch. (OK, we'll ignore my ultra-thin Calvin Klein "airport special", designed to go through metal detectors without setting them off.) I wore it for 6 years, and then I had the misfortune to damage the bracelet. I inquired, and found that I'd have to send it back to Japan for repair, at a ludicrous price. Instead I decided to buy a replacement; this time I opted for this stainless steel version from Amazon.Why "almost perfect"? Well, as other reviewers have noted, the Skyhawk can only handle whole-hour time zones, and I need to travel to India on business quite often. This is frustrating. On my last trip, a few months ago, I stopped at the watch store in the new Hyderabad airport. I figured that the best place to find a Citizen watch that worked in India would be in India. And I was right - I was able to buy a Navihawk. It doesn't have Eco-Drive, but apart from that it's functionally equivalent to the Skyhawk - plus Indian time zone support! I paid a considerable price for it, but I don't mind: the Navihawk seems to have disappeared from the Amazon Citizen store.So now I have two Citizen "hawks": a Navihawk, and a Skyhawk. The Navihawk is slightly lighter; the Skyhawk slightly more comfortable. When I'm at home, I pick one at random each morning. But next week, when I head off to Chennai on business, I'll be wearing the Navihawk. Life is good.