This is the citizen cz, smart, hybrid watch and its actually a really cool technology. So in hybrid cars you have an electric engine and a gas engine and it uses either or both simultaneously, to give you the best possible fuel efficiency while not leaving you stranded. If you have a gas station, but no power plug in a similar way. This watch gives you an analog watch with hands that shows you the time, but secretly. The entire back face is actually an e ink technology screen, so its a notification watch, which means that it also has all of the other features of a smart watch, including you can see on the back. It actually has sensors, so it can monitor your activity. It can monitor your heart rate. It can do sleep monitoring. All the notifications are terrific, its a citizen watch, so you know that its going to be reliable and tough and durable. This is a really pretty durable watch. I really like the style of it and has a rubber band on it and its sort of an interesting design. I havent seen one quite like this: before comes with a couple of different band: color choices and theres different choices for the dial but ill get to that in a minute. So 44 millimeter face its stainless steel, water resistant to three atmospheres and heres. One of the really great things about it: 15 day battery life, so you need to charge it about twice a month.
How do you charge it? Well, heres, one of the wrinkles. It comes with its own custom charging cable, its little cradle, that you put on the back of the watch and it uses a magnet to fit properly and then its just usb a so its pretty standard. You can plug it into really anything, including your computer, to get the power that you need now. If you lose this cable, it is a bit of a bummer. In fact, let me just show you you can see the sensors sort of trigger when i take that off, so you can see that little bit of green action thats how its actually monitoring heart rate and such, but it does like, i said, have all these different Monitors – and you know its really – i like notification – watches, because i can also ignore them, but i can see things, but i dont have this sense that i have to interact with them. So if i get an email, if i get a text message, if one of my programs notifies me of a home security event, itll just pop up on the back face and in fact lets go ahead and do a close up. You can see a couple of my notifications, Music now. All of this is controlled through an app that you have on your smartphone called citizen connected and let me go ahead and show you some of the features of it because its a pretty nice little program, though its a little bit short on features, thats.
Okay. So if i go right off the bat, the app shows me that a its connected and my watch the hands actually just moved for a second to confirm that connection. But it is connected, it does have the very latest data and then i can swipe up and down and see. How am i doing well today, i havent done much activity yet, but ive been doing about four to forty five hundred steps each day. The last couple of days so thats pretty nice um, you can also go into what they call challenge mode. So if you have a friend who also has the same watch or a partner or something, then you can challenge each other for activities you can get into customization and theres a lot of customization you can see here. This gives you a much better sense of how the back face of the watch is actually a screen, because these are all different ways. I can customize the three buttons and customize the back screen itself. You can use presets like this, but you can also just go ahead and do your own customizations go ahead and apply camouflage actually like that one so its applied, and now the watch actually has a different face on it, and i really like it. Actually. I, like the camouflage, face notice. However, that is not color its a you know: grayscale black and white screen. I dont really have any problem with that. Then you can get into alarms and settings and its interesting when you go into apps, that it actually shows you its family of apps, that it can work with as opposed to what apps are actually on your phone.
I was a little disconcerted where im like i dont think i have hipchat or telegram or tinder or tom skype. I dont know what that is. I dont have any of this stuff on my phone or so i dont know how i would get notifications on. My watch, but the fact is, you could turn these on and off or you can ignore them. What ive done is i actually didnt enable any of those im just using notifications on my smartphone. This is an apple, iphone, 13 pro and then its just sending those notifications to the watch and then finally, you can see heres some data and you can do some settings here, theres a fair amount. You can do you can see if you have the latest firmware version, all these sort of things. Most importantly, it shows you battery level. I have not yet figured out an easy way to get the battery level on my watch unless i actually go and make that one of the complications. So one of the things that i find a little frustrating about the watch is that the usability is a little bit confusing, so, for example, in the manual, let me turn off this recording now, so in the manual it tells you that you can push on the Crown and then the hands move, so you can see your notifications and then you can push it again and then the hands will go back, but it doesnt actually go back.
You just have to wait for it to time out, which is a little frustrating theres. Also, a light which i actually sort of stumbled across is that if you double tap on the screen, it actually illuminates the back screen, and i should say if you double tap on the crystal that would make more sense. Then it illuminates the back screen, but i didnt actually see that in the documentation, so they have online documentation its a little frustrating to try to read through because its not a sort of linear narrative of heres everything you want to do and how it all works. Its more like a q a so you have to know the questions and it doesnt actually field everything. So usability not super great, but the design is really cool. I really like the notifications, because theyre using that e ink screen technology when youre out in bright sunlight. This is insanely readable. It is the exact opposite of like an apple watch or samsung gear watch or something where those are using regular screens. You know sort of like the same screen, wed, have on a phone and then theyre really hard to read in direct sunlight. This is the opposite problem, so, if its a really dark room, its really dark, but if youre out in direct sunlight boy, it just looks crystal clear: its really pretty darn impressive and, of course, since youre getting those notifications – and you want to read them – that works Out really well so kind of a mixed bag.
I really like it as a watch. I think that maybe one more generation of smartwatch technology will get things a little smoother with the user interface, but all in all this is definitely one to check out if youre. Looking for something thats, not quite that apple watch charge every 24 hours and super fancy screen and expensive, but you still want to have something a little more than just a timepiece on your wrist. So you can maybe be a little more aware of whats going on in your digital life and then, of course, dial it down if you actually choose, because that totally makes sense right cool. So we do need to talk about price. Now, before i get to price im going to ask, if you dont mind, go ahead and subscribe to this channel its super easy just a tap or a click on that subscribe button and were connected, really appreciate that, and, as is hopefully obvious, i am really candid In my reviews, i dont hold punches im going to tell you the straight dirt im going to tell you what i like and dislike because thats, why youre watching this right excellent! This is the citizen, cz smart, hybrid watch and you can get it in a combination of band and dial colors so that it comes in black and black, which is what this one is. That also includes the band and theres silver and blue, and you can also get a green or a white band with different combinations, its sort of a mix and match thing, and it is 350 discounted currently down to 297.
50 at amazon.com. Now, im not going to be im not going to lie to you. It feels a little expensive for what it is, particularly at three hundred and fifty dollars that feels a little expensive, but its a really nice watch and maybe around two. You know two. Ninety seven. Fifty honestly, three hundred dollars right so three hundred dollars, maybe feels about right, but you know this might discount even further, but its a really great watch company, its a really great watch and theyve added some really nice additional technology. So its definitely one to check out, as for me, im going to put this back on my wrist and i need to get that step count up for very obvious reasons.
