Citizen celebrates the Promaster Collection’s 35th anniversary with three distinct limited editions

Jamie Weiss

Citizen is one of the world’s most prolific watchmakers, so much so that it’s a challenge to nail down what the Japanese brand’s number one model is. Sure, its Eco-Drive solar watch technology is pretty well-known, but that’s a type of movement rather than a specific model. These days, the Tsuyosa and Series 8 ranges are increasingly popular, as is the brand’s high-end line, The Citizen. But if you had to pick a collection as Citizen’s most iconic, you’d probably go for the Promaster. An incredibly diverse collection that’s best known for its dive watches but also includes field and pilot’s watches, the Promaster name has long been a badge of quality – for 35 years, in fact. And that’s what Citizen’s celebrating with its latest 3 limited edition Promasters. Each of these 35th Anniversary Promasters represents a distinct environment – Sea, Land and Air – while also showing off different aspects of what makes Citizen such a compelling watchmaker.

This is going to be a bit of a complex review, as this Promaster 35th Anniversary collection consists of three very different watches – a testament to the breadth of the Promaster range – and they all have very different cases, dials and inspirations. Let’s dive in!

The cases

First of all, let’s start with the Sea part of this collection, which takes the form of a mechanical dive watch. This Promaster Marine ref. NB6026-56L was inspired by the iconic Challenge Diver, also known as the Fujitsubo Diver. It features a 41mm diameter, 12.3mm thick case made from Citizen’s Super Titanium, a proprietary alloy treated with Citizen’s Duratect surface-hardening technology, which makes it 5 times harder and 40% lighter than stainless steel. Specifically, Citizen lists this Promaster Marine as being “Duratect Platinum”.

Citizen does a poor job of explaining this anywhere officially but there are many different grades of Duratect, with Duratect Platinum actually being one of the lowest grades despite its highfalutin name. It’s all a bit confusing. However, watches with Duratect Platinum-treated cases have a hardness rating of about 1,000 Vickers. For comparison, normal 18k gold is around 150 Vickers, 316L stainless steel is around 200 Vickers and grade 5 titanium is around 300 Vickers – so that’s to say that this Promaster Marine is more scratch-resistant than most titanium watches.

Moving on from that tangent… This Promaster Marine’s dimensions land it in pretty standard tool watch territory: Citizen is a brand known for making big watches (and the other two watches in this Promaster 35th Anniversary collection are significantly bigger) but the ref.  NB6026-56L is still pretty manageable even for smaller wrists. It features an appropriately retro design with predominately brushed surfaces and no crown guard, unlike the vast majority of Promaster dive watches.

Next up, we have the Land part of this trilogy, represented by an Eco-Drive ana-digi model with a large Memory-in-Pixel or MIP display. More on that in a second. This Promaster Land ref. JV1008-63E is a distinctly robust watch, boasting a 44mm grey PVD stainless steel case with a heavily knurled crown and pushers to activate all its many functions. It also has knurled brackets at 12 and 6 o’clock which frame the bezel: these seem entirely for aesthetic purposes, as it actually has a rotating internal bezel, adjustable via the crown at 8 o’clock, which allows the watch to be used as a compass.

The final part of this 35th-anniversary trilogy, the Sky model, is the largest and most complex of the three. It too is an ana-digi Eco-Drive with a grey PVD stainless steel case, this time a 46mm one, with additional rose gold highlights, a black dial, a fixed external instrument bezel and a faux-integrated bracelet/lugless design. Citizen explains that the colour scheme of this Promaster Sky ref. JY8146-54E, which they’ve dubbed “Midnight Sun”, was inspired by seasons in polar regions when the sun never sets. All three Promaster 35th Anniversary models feature sapphire crystals, closed casebacks engraved with a 35th-anniversary logo and are water-resistant to 200 metres.

The dials

The Promaster Marine ref. NB6026-56L was inspired by a specific 1977 Challenge Diver that washed up on the shores of Australia’s Long Reef Beach in 1983 that’s become part of Citizen lore. The watch was covered in barnacles and spent untold years on the bottom of the sea floor, but impressively, was still running when it was recovered. Fittingly, its dial and colour scheme pays homage to this Australian story: a washed-out blue dial and bezel ring with large white markers meant to evoke the blue ocean and white sands of Long Reef Beach, contrasted by a black aluminium bezel insert.

Otherwise, it’s fairly classic dive watch fare here: a matte anodised blue dial surface topped with chunky rectangular lume-filled indices paired with Mercedes-style hands and a date window at 3 o’clock. There’s not much to complain about here and the dial colour is quite lovely, its tone reminding me somewhat of the rather exceptional Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra-Thin Date ref. Q1238480 that also dropped this year (an unusual comparison for sure, but one I don’t think Citizen should be mad about).

The dial of the Promaster Land ref. JV1008-63E gives off massive MIL-SPEC vibes, with a camouflaged pattern, sword hands, oversized Arabic numerals at 3, 6 and 9 framed by two subdials in the lower half of the dial and a large MIP display in the top half. If you’re not familiar with MIP technology, it’s essentially an advanced form of your typical LCD which uses hundreds of small pixels, even more than your typical dot matrix and much more than the classic seven-segment displays we’re used to seeing in digital watches.

The advantage of MIP displays is that they use far less power than other LCD displays while also having a higher resolution, and are easier to read outdoors. In essence, it makes this Promaster Land easier to read than most ana-digi watches, which tend to be extremely busy. It also gives it a distinct look that makes it stand out not only from the other two Promaster 35th Anniversary watches but from most ana-digi tool watches generally.

Speaking of busy, that’s the only way you can describe the dial of the Promaster Sky ref. JY8146-54E. Rather than using a single large MIP display like its Land sibling, it opts for an extremely information-packed and complex black dial (well, technically it’s transparent and just exposing the solar cell underneath) with multiple subdials, LCD displays and information-packed chapter ring. You’ll definitely need to read the manual first before strapping this bad boy to your wrist and trying to play with all the settings/features.

The bracelets

All three 35th Anniversary models come on case-matching bracelets. The Sea model has a Super Titanium bracelet with tool-less micro-adjustment and a diving clasp; the Land has a grey PVD steel bracelet with a diving clasp with three points of micro-adjustment but no on-the-fly adjustability; and finally, the Sky also has a grey PVD steel bracelet with a push-button clasp and three points of micro-adjustment. The Sky’s clasp is the most premium of the three – it’s just a shame it lacks the tool-less micro-adjustment of the Sea model’s clasp. All three have pressed rather than machined clasps: not ideal, not a dealbreaker. The Land model also comes with an additional canvas camo-print strap with a grey PVD steel pin buckle.

The movements

The Sea model is powered by the Citizen/Miyota calibre 9051. Of course, Citizen owns Miyota, qualifying this as an in-house movement; furthermore, the calibre 9051 is currently only found in Citizen watches. An automatic movement with a 4Hz beat rate and 42-hour power reserve, it uses anti-magnetic materials for its balance spring and surrounding components, meaning it can resist up to 200 Gauss: far above the ISO standard and most dive watches.

The Land model utilises the Citizen calibre U822, an Eco-Drive solar quartz movement with a huge array of complications including a perpetual calendar, chronograph, world time, multiple alarms and a countdown timer. At full charge and in power-saving mode, it will run for around 3 years. As mentioned previously, its use of a large MIP display differentiates itself from other Eco-Drive movements.

The Sky model also has an Eco-Drive movement, the Citizen calibre U680, which boasts all the functions and more of the Promaster Land, with highlights including two LCD time zone indicators and a power reserve/radio frequency origin indicator. The latter is because it’s capable of radio timekeeping, meaning it features automatic atomic clock synchronization, giving it insane accuracy. It has even greater longevity than the Land’s U822 as well, capable of running for 3 and a half years at full charge in power-saving mode.

The verdict

Citizen certainly hasn’t skimped on the features when it comes to all three of these milestone-celebrating watches, which collectively serve as a potent reminder of the legacy and comprehensiveness of the Promaster range. At the risk of being utterly predictable, I think the Sea part of this trilogy is the model that speaks to me the most, and not just because it’s the only mechanical one. I think it’s a uniquely pretty retro diver with a great Australian story behind it, and I have no doubt that it will be the most popular of the three thanks to its more mainstream appeal (ironically, it’s also the most expensive and most limited of the three, too).

I might have big wrists but the large diameters and visual busyness of the Land and Sky models aren’t really my thing – but you can’t deny that they offer a lot of bang for one’s buck in terms of features, and you can’t celebrate a Citizen milestone without Eco-Drive. In short, a fitting 35th-anniversary celebration!

Citizen Promaster 35th Anniversary Collection pricing and availability

All three Citizen Promaster 35th Anniversary models are available now, with all being limited editions of varying availability. The Sea is the least available with 4,500 pieces, the Land the most with 5,900 pieces and the Sky being a limited edition of 5,600 pieces. Price: US$995 (Land, Sky), US$1,195 (Sea).

Brand	Citizen	Citizen	Citizen
Model	Promaster Mechanical Diver 200m ‘Fujitsubo’ 35th Anniversary (“Sea”)	Promaster Eco-Drive Combination Watch 35th Anniversary (“Land”)	Promaster Eco-Drive Atomic Timekeeping 35th Anniversary (“Sky”)
Reference Number	NB6026-56L	JV1008-63E	JY8146-54E
Case Dimensions	41mm (D) x 12.3mm (T)	43.9mm (D) x 14.0mm (T)	45.7mm (D) x 13.8mm (T)
Case Material	Super Titanium	Grey PVD stainless steel	Grey PVD stainless steel
Water Resistance	200 metres	200 metres	200 metres
Crystal(s)	Sapphire	Sapphire	Sapphire
Dial	Vintage blue	Camouflage pattern	Black with rose gold highlights
Lug Width	20mm	22mm	22mm
Strap	Super Titanium three-link bracelet, folding clasp	Grey PVD steel three-link bracelet, folding clasp Additional canvas camo-print strap, grey PVD steel pin buckle	Grey PVD steel three-link bracelet, folding clasp
Movement	Citizen/Miyota 9051, in-house, automatic	Citizen U822, in-house, Eco-Drive solar quartz	Citizen U680, in-house, Eco-Drive solar quartz
Power Reserve	42 hours	3 years (power saving mode, full charge)	3.5 years (power saving mode, full charge)
Functions	Hours, minutes, seconds, date, unidirectional diving bezel	Hours, minutes, seconds, day, date, month, perpetual calendar, chronograph, split time, world time, alarm, world time alarm, daylight savings, countdown timer, dual time	Hours, minutes, seconds, day, date, month, radio timekeeping, perpetual calendar, chronograph, split time, world time, UTC display, alarm, world time alarm, daylight savings, countdown timer, dual time
Availability	Limited edition of 4,500 pieces	Limited edition of 5,900 pieces	Limited edition of 5,600 pieces
Price	US$1,195	US$995	US$995