[VIDEO] Review: Citizen’s “The Citizen” Reference AQ4103-16E

Here’s a thing I’ve come to realize about watches writing about them for five years. Most of them are exactly fine. They have some good qualities and some bad, but they tend to cancel each other out, resulting in something that’s perfectly acceptable and adequate but maybe not great. Truly exceptional watches are rare. Watches with no obvious faults, watches that make you rethink a brand, a technology, or your own taste. These are the watches I love to write about the most and I jump at the chance to do so. 

I’m not saying the Citizen “The Citizen” reference AQ4103-16E is a perfect watch without any faults, but I’m not not saying it either. It’s certainly exceptional by just about any measure, and it’s literally quite rare. And if you’ve never been exposed to a watch from the upper tier of Citizen’s range, it could certainly cause you to rethink the brand, but the good stuff at the high end of Citizen’s catalog has been an open secret for long enough that if you claim not to know much about it, well, you should probably just read Worn & Wound more often. 

Kidding aside, this iteration of The Citizen really did blow me away when I had a chance to sample it recently. It does so many things so well, it’s pretty tough to ignore. Citizen has worked hard over the last few years to expand their offerings in the The Citizen lineup, and I think they’ve done a pretty good job of communicating what makes this collection special to the larger watch public. We cover them here, of course, but I also see them at watch meetups and hear them discussed in group chats and the like with a frequency approaching similar watches from Grand Seiko, an obvious comparison point that we won’t ignore in this review. There was a time when these somewhat strange, limited edition watches with an eagle on the dial were strictly in the JDM Hidden Jewel category, but we’re at a point where the consciousness around them has expanded a bit. They’re not quite household names, but they aren’t gatekept secrets either. 

The Citizen line is awkwardly named, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it’s a deliberate choice on the part of the brand. It makes it easier to set these watches aside from the rest of the collection and understand what makes them unique. Simply put, The Citizen watches represent the brand’s highest levels of craft and watchmaking tech, blending them together into watches that highlight both the brand’s ingenuity and artistic creativity. There are other lines (such as the Attesa collection) that might go further technologically, but The Citizen watches are really about the balance, and this one in particular leans heavily into the craft. 

The craft, in this case, is the Washi paper dial with meticulously placed flecks of gold leaf. Washi dials are a specialty of Citizen’s, and we’ve seen several in the The Citizen lineup over the last few years, but this is the first I can recall that includes the added textural element of another material to provide an accent. Washi paper is a thin, semi-translucent paper used frequently in Japanese culture and in the making of household goods like clothing. The gold leaf flecks are hand placed on each dial by skilled artisans, and the Washi paper itself is made in the traditional way by Japanese papermakers. All of the little details inherent in the dial (particularly the faceted markers and hands, and the applied logo) communicate a feeling of luxury, if not opulence. It’s impressive in a watch with a retail price of $3,800.

I’ll be honest, when I first saw images of this watch in a press release, I thought the gold leaf would be a little too much. It’s very ornate, of course, and struck me as a bit of craft just the sake of it, a way for Citizen to promote the handmade nature of the dials by using the “every example is unique” line. Indeed, every dial is unique, as these are truly handmade objects. And while I don’t have any real knowledge of how difficult or time consuming it is to work with Washi paper and gold leaf, I can say that the end result is impressive, visually. The gold has real depth and gives the dial a vaguely three dimensional quality, which is exacerbated I’m sure by the thinness and near translucency of the Washi paper. I also just enjoy the idea of something being decorative purely for the aesthetic pleasure of it. Citizen could have made (and indeed does make) a version of this watch with a more straightforward black dial without the distraction of the gold leaf, but this dial, simply put, looks nicer. 

The dial is wrapped in a 38mm case made from Citizen’s Super Titanium alloy, which is incredibly light and said to be largely scratch resistant. The gold color is thanks to a Duratect coating, and I’ll say here that while I’m not normally drawn to gold plating of any kind on a watch, Citizen has done a particularly nice job in this instance of mimicking the visual appearance and luster of a precious metal. The case is attractive and well finished, but of course you will never mistake this for real gold after picking the watch up and actually handling it – it’s just so incredibly light. 

And that’s one of the tricks of this example of The Citizen: it truly does cause a moment of cognitive dissonance when you see it on the table, and your brain says “gold watch” and then you pick it up and you realize “oh, titanium.” But that’s to the watch’s benefit in a number of ways. First, if making people think you’re wearing a solid gold dress watch is your thing, you can safely assume most casual observers will be fooled by this one. Some watches, because of dials that look inexpensive or plating that is obviously not the real deal, scream IMPOSTER when they go for the gold look, but because Citizen nailed the tone of the case and paired it with a dial that takes zero shortcuts, this one passes the initial smell test. 

Second, and more importantly, the titanium case leads to an absolutely fantastic wearing experience. The case size sits in what will be the Goldilocks zone for many (it’s 12.2mm thick and about 41mm from lug to lug) and it weighs, for all intents and purposes, practically nothing. This is exactly how you want a dress watch to wear, of course, but because this is actually a titanium watch with robust quartz movement that’s suitable for everyday wear, it feels like you’re getting value on top of value. 

The real secret weapon of the AQ4103-16E, however, is the movement. Caliber A060 is a high accuracy quartz movement that is quite simply loaded with every feature you’d want in a showstopper quartz caliber. Again, this is Citizen in its no compromises zone – it feels like we’re getting the best of the best. 

OK, let’s run through the features and specs. The accuracy of this movement is rated to five seconds per year. That is astoundingly good, and an improvement on the comparable (but not really) 9F movements made by Grand Seiko. It’s also a perpetual calendar, so once the watch is properly set, the date will automatically change based on the length of the month (even though the month is not displayed). This kind of under-the-radar high complication is one of my favorite things in watchmaking. Naturally, it’s an Eco-Drive powered caliber, and benefits from all the conveniences of Citizen’s solar technology, making this, in addition to everything else, a great grab and go piece. 

Last but not least, my absolute favorite feature: local jumping hours. Show me a non-GMT watch with a local jumping hour hand, and I’ll show you a watch that I will be orders of magnitude more likely to buy than anything remotely comparable without this insanely convenient feature. For just about everyone, local jumping hours without a GMT is going to be a better option while traveling, particularly if you’re traveling domestically in the United States, and can add or subtract by three without too much trouble. I just tend to think that being able to visually track a second time zone (let alone a third) is redundant for a vast majority of the watch wearing public, and the ease of quickly adjusting to local time when stepping off a plane and not even having to consider what time it is in the place you just left is kind of the height of luxury. Maybe if nothing else, a watch like this will help you enjoy your vacation a little more fully, not being reminded of the time back at the office whenever you glance at your wrist. In any event, I’ll take this opportunity to publicly request that more watches be outfitted with this feature, and if you’re a political candidate running on a platform of making jumping local hours a legal requirement on all new watches, I’d like to donate to your campaign. 

When you’re looking at a higher end quartz watch, the movement really matters, and the A060 is, as far as I can tell, pretty much flawless. Citizen has deployed this caliber to other pieces in the The Citizen collection, so if gold leaf dials aren’t your thing, you can likely find a style to suit your taste, or if you wait a bit, Citizen might release something you like even more (the brand apparently has plans to expand their The Citizen offerings in the not too distant future, a very good thing in my view). 

I’m not and never have been a movement nerd. The caliber is generally just not the component of a watch that excites me the most. But every so often, a watch comes around that runs on a movement that’s so special and feature packed, the caliber effectively justifies the existence of the watch. Even with everything else this example of The Citizen has going for it, it’s the A060 that’s really worth getting excited about, and that’s coming from someone who very rarely gets excited about movements to begin with, at least when it comes to watches with a retail price in the four figures. 

I said at the beginning that we’d have to talk about Grand Seiko at some point in this review. It’s impossible not to draw comparisons between the two biggest names in Japanese watchmaking, particularly when we’re discussing their quartz technology. As readers are likely aware, I’m a huge Grand Seiko fan, and I’ve owned quartz Grand Seikos in the past. I think I might prefer, in some cases, the general aesthetic of Grand Seiko, but at this point it has to be acknowledged that Citizen has outdone them in terms of the functionality of their high end quartz movements. The accuracy of the A060 is superior to most 9F calibers (some are regulated to match the 5 second per year tolerances quoted by Citizen), and Grand Seiko does not offer a quartz perpetual calendar. They do have some non-GMT quartz references with a local jumping hour feature (the boutique only SBGP005) but it is far from standard fare in their quartz lineup. 

This is not a Grand Seiko review so we won’t dwell here for too long, but it’s hard to miss that they’ve effectively been sitting on their existing quartz tech for some time now, as Citizen and others make gains. Grand Seiko, to be fair, does a lot of other things at a very high level, and in the last few years have completely overhauled both their high beat rate and Spring Drive calibers, so it stands to reason that quartz movements could be next. But there was a time when the go-to recommendation for a higher end, high accuracy quartz watch would be Grand Seiko almost by default, but with movements like the A060 that’s just no longer the case. And don’t forget, Citizen also makes the Caliber 0100, accurate to a mindboggling one second per year.

This entire discussion about the features and benefits of the very best in quartz timekeeping assumes, of course, a level of interest in spending several thousand dollars on a quartz watch in the first place. While I have personally shifted to mostly mechanical watches in my own personal collection, I hold space, as they say, for interesting quartz watches, and am even open to being completely blown away by them, as I was with this edition of The Citizen. Many articles have been written over the years on our site and others that amount to defenses of high accuracy quartz, but at the end of the day, it’s all somewhat moot. The fact is, you just never know what’s going to genuinely impress you, and the feature set combined with the objective beauty of the AQ4103-16E just worked for me. In other words, I’m not here to tell you that a $4,000 quartz watch is something you should consider if you don’t find quartz timekeeping interesting or you just have a strong preference for mechanical watchmaking. Those are both perfectly legitimate positions to hold. But I am here to tell you Citizen is doing some truly impressive work under the The Citizen banner, and if you’re curious about the huge variety of watchmaking taking place at this enormous and historic brand, they are more than worth checking out. Citizen