Introducing the Citizen….The Citizen, with an all New Caliber from La Joux-Perret

Look, we’re not intentionally focusing on integrated bracelet sports watches recently. We promise. While we like this style of watch quite a bit, it’s of course obvious to anyone who has a passing interest in watches that there is a lot of great stuff out there if you can break free of this frankly somewhat limiting, and currently ultra-trendy, watch style. It just so happens that we’ve reached a point, after a period of high end (mostly) Swiss watchmakers jumping on the integrated bandwagon, that affordable alternatives are beginning to emerge. Remember, it takes years for these products to take shape, so if you think about where the integrated bracelet sports watch market was a few years ago, it makes perfect sense that entries from Tissot, Bell & Ross, Maurice Lacroix, and others are showing up right about now. And here at Worn & Wound, we endeavor to cover it all, particularly when these types of trends take shape. So it was both surprising on the one hand and not surprising at all to see news of Citizen’s big spring announcement this week, a new mechanical watch simply dubbed The Citizen. But there’s more under the surface of this one, and it represents some fascinating corporate synergy for anyone willing to look. 

As a watchmaker, Citizen has a long history, but is often overshadowed by Seiko when it comes to Japanese watchmaking. As a brand, though, Citizen has an answer for Seiko in almost every category. Their catalog consists of watches with extremely accurate quartz movements, artisanal dials (we looked at one in our guide to Sleeper watches last year), and a nearly neverending selection of value driven watches in all styles running on their excellent Eco-Drive movement technology. With this new release, it looks like they have their sights set on the Swiss, and they’re going after that market with an arrow from their quiver that they’ve rarely used in this fashion: La Joux-Perret. 

La Joux-Perret is a Swiss movement manufacturer that was acquired by the Citizen Watch Group in 2012. They’ve made calibers for some pretty notable Swiss houses, including Armin Strom, Hublot, and even TAG Heuer. La Joux-Perret also has a longstanding relationship with Arnold & Son that predates the Citizen acquisition, and that seems to have been the primary outlet for LJP movements over the last decade. Including a brand new La Joux-Perret movement in Citizen’s biggest watch release of the year feels like a huge swing for the fences on one hand, and a completely logical step to take given their corporate resources on the other. It’s fair to ask “What took so long?” when you examine what we’ve got in The Citizen. 

And what we’ve got in The Citizen is something fairly significant. We’ll start with the movement, which is essentially a Citizen and La Joux-Perret co-production and is being called the Caliber 0200 (Caliber 0100 is an ultra accurate quartz movement which is by some measures the most accurate watch movement ever made). Citizen engineering led to the development of the movement, and La Joux-Perret’s impact is mainly found in the finishing. Citizen is touting the Caliber 0200 as accurate “above chronometer standard,” and is indeed rated to -3 to +5 seconds per day. It utilizes a free sprung balance wheel designed to keep a stable right with minimal adjustment while being largely resistant to impacts and shocks. Citizen also highlights that the 0200’s escapement is made using next generation LIGA manufacturing techniques, which allows for new levels of precision and extremely tight tolerances in the building of the escapement itself, which in turn leads to better movement performance. 

The visual impact of the movement is meant to be unlike anything else Citizen produces, and if you associate the brand mostly with inexpensive quartz watches, the decoration on the Caliber 0200 will be particularly impressive. The winding rotor has been skeletonized for a mostly unobstructed view of the movement, which features multiple styles of finishing specifically applied to create a sense of depth. 

The dial side is impressive as well, if a bit sober by comparison. You can have The Citizen in any color you want, as long as it’s black. It features a matte decorative grain finish (except at the subsidiary seconds dial at 6:00, which provides a nice contrast) and an applied Citizen wordmark and old-school eagle logo. The case and H-link bracelet are fairly standard angular fare in the realm of integrated bracelet sports watches. There are lots of sharp angles, and a mix of finely brushed finishing on the flat surfaces with high polish at the accent points. The case is well sized and slender, measuring 40mm in diameter and 10.9mm tall, which is certainly comparable with much of the high end Swiss competition. 

The Citizen featuring Caliber 0200 is set to go on sale in the fall at a retail price of $6,000. If you’re reading this and thinking “That’s a lot for a Citizen,” it’s instructive to remember that a lot of watch enthusiasts had the same thought about Grand Seiko when they came on the scene in a major way in the US a relatively short time ago, and they’ve obviously experienced immense growth worldwide. Citizen, of course, is taking a different approach with this watch, making the most of their widespread corporate ties, whereas Seiko and Grand Seiko are largely vertically integrated. Still, it will be interesting to gauge the response to this watch once it’s more widely available, and to see if it pushes Citizen in a genuinely new direction, or is more of a one-off project. Citizen