Citizen The Citizen Releases New Washi Paper Dial Watch For 100 Years Of The Brand; Fortis Presents Their Mars Mission Watch; Sterglas Has A Great New Chrono; And Byrne Shrinks Down Their Icon

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I was sure that the Citizen The Citizen was going to be my favorite watch today. And yeah, I like it a lot. But both that Fortis and the Sternglas are just incredible. I can’t decide which one I like more.

In this issue:

• Citizen The Citizen Pays Their Respect To 100 Years Of The Brand With A Gorgeous Washi Paper, But Still Horribly Named, AQ4100-65L

• Fortis Presents Their Candidate For The First Watch Worn On Mars, The AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer

• Sternglas Introduces Amazing Colors With The Bauhaus-Inspired Hamburg Chrono

• Byrne Slims Down Their Already Iconic Rotating Numeral Watch With The New Gyro Dial Meca

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 19 seconds

👂What’s new

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Citizen The Citizen Pays Their Respect To 100 Years Of The Brand With A Gorgeous Washi Paper, But Still Horribly Named, AQ4100-65L

I find myself increasingly drawn towards Citizen The Citizen. The horrifically named brand is what Grand Seiko is to Seiko, a premium offering that places Citizen in a higher market point. They are beautiful, fantastically made pieces powered by both very interesting mechanical movements and even more intriguing quartz ones. If they could find the room in their hearts and minds to change that name, The Citizen would easily be right behind - if not on par with - Grand Seiko. Well, The Citizen is now joining the 100 year celebration of the Citizen name with the new limited edition Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L. Not only is the brand name horrible, their model names are no better.

The AQ4100-65L - I’ll just call it The Citizen from now on - comes in a Super Titanium case that measures 38.3mm wide and 12.2mm thick. While it might look like a dress watch head on, it’s actually quite a chunky and angular case, with sharp angles, tapering and faceted lugs and a rather prominent slab side. It looks very modern, a feeling that is enhanced with the combination of a brushed case and polished facets and a polished sloping smooth bezel. The bezel surrounds a sapphire crystal while the caseback is solid and features The Citizen eagle crest. Water resistance is 100 meters.

But it’s all about the dial with The Citizen. While Grand Seiko focuses heavily on nature for inspiration, The Citizen often uses washi paper, a material used in traditional Japanese paper screens for hundreds of years, to make their dials. This gives each dial a unique texture and this The Citizen model gets a beautiful washi paper dial rendered in a dark indigo. The dial allows light to pass through it, a necessity to drive the Eco-Drive, and it has a printed outer minutes scale, along with brightly faceted baton indices. The hands are chamfered and dauphine shaped, the seconds hand is rendered in gold and The Citizen line’s eagle emblem is applied at 6 o’clock.

Inside is something pretty interesting. While most quartz movements are maligned among today’s watch enthusiast, the in-house CAL.A060 Eco-Drive light-powered quartz movement inside this The Citizen is something else. It’s incredibly accurate, even for quartz standards, with an accuracy of only +5/-5 seconds per year. You also get a perpetual calendar movement, with an automatically adjusting date display that should remain accurate through the year 2100, including leap years. You get 18 months of runtime on one full solar charge. The watch comes on a matching Super Titanium bracelet.

The Citizen The Citizen AQ4100-65L is limited to 600 pieces and should be on sale right now. The U.S. Citizen website says the watch is out of stock, but I’m assuming this is because they haven’t put in on sale just yet. I find it very hard to believe that this super-niche watch that was announced not even 24 hours ago is already sold out. Especially at a price that might have a lot of people scratching their head asking whether they should pay $4,425 for a Citizen. I would for this one. See more on the Citizen website.

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Fortis Presents Their Candidate For The First Watch Worn On Mars, The AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer

At the beginning of the U.S. space program, NASA was pretty busy making sure their rockets didn’t explode on launch and ramping up production. They knew that down the line they would have to standardise as much equipment as possible, but for the time being they allowed astronauts to carry their personal watches to space. But when the time came to select one watch to issue for them, they put together a number of tests a watch had to pass, including extreme temperature cycling, exposure to humidity, high and low pressures and vibrations. The watch that famously passed this test was the Omega Speedmaster which became the first watch worn on the Moon. Since then we haven’t visited any other celestial bodies, but it only makes sense that Mars will be next. And you can bet that watchmakers will do anything they must to strap a watch on astronauts on another planet. Throwing their hat into the ring for the first Mars watch is Fortis with the AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer.

Of course, the AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer won’t be going to Mars any time soon, but it has joined the Austrian Space Forum and the Armenian Aerospace Agency on a four-week mission in Armenia called AMADEE-24 which simulates the conditions astronauts will face on Mars.

The AMADEE-24 is based on the Novonaut, Fortis’ chronograph made for space travel, which means it’s a substantial piece of equipment. At 42mm wide, 15mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 51mm it’s large, but it makes sense because the watch is made to be worn on the outside of a space suit. Thankfully, the case is made out of titanium, so it’s not too unwieldily. The biggest difference between the AMADEE-24 and the Novonaut, at least on the outside, is the bezel. It’s made out of titanium, matte, bidirectional and filled with Super-LumiNova. What’s truly different is the fact that the 60 minute scale has a countdown function with two 10-minute segments, which allows astronauts to set the countdown at the moment they send a message to Earth and can track the 10 minutes it takes for communications to transmit. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is black, vertically brushed and with a deeply engraved wave pattern that covers the dial from 11 o’clock to just past 5 o’clock. The pattern is supposed to represent the axis of Mars, which is tilted at 25.2 degrees. The Fortis AMADEE-24 still has the 30-minute counter and the running seconds at 9 o’clock, but loses the 12-hour counter at 6 o’clock and replaces it with a badge of the mission. The 30-minute counter is highlighted in a ridged, silvery ring for extra visibility. I also got seriously excited when I saw the day-date window in the press photo as it reads “SOL 13” and I was sure that they managed to modify the movement to show sols instead of days, with sols being a solar day on Mars. A sol is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long, making for different day and date tracking. Unfortunately, this is not the case, it’s just a cheeky reference.

Speaking of the movement, inside is the proprietary Fortis WERK 17 movement. It’s made by La Joux-Perret for Fortis. It’s an automatic movement with a column wheel chronograph, a custom traversing bridge for added durability and a tangential micro-screw regulation for increased accuracy. It beats at 4Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a titanium three-row bracelet with a push-button clasp and easy micro-adjust system, along with an extra-long velcro strap to make it easier to strap on the outside of a suit.

The Fortis AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer is limited to just 100 pieces and priced at €6,100. Quite a chunk of change, but this is an incredibly niche product so I assume it will find its public. See more on the Fortis website.

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Sternglas Introduces Amazing Colors With The Bauhaus-Inspired Hamburg Chrono

A couple of months ago I wrote about Sternglas for the first time in the newsletter and bemoaned the fact that great brands like that often fall off my radar and I don’t get to write about them. Well, that Lumatik - which incorporated a great color palette into a minimalist Bauhaus-like design - inspired me to keep a close eye on them. And I’m glad I did, as Sternglas just announced that they are launching a chronograph in their Hamburg range. And what a watch this is! Amazing colors, simple design and a spectacular price.

The Hamburg case grow just a bit in size for the new Chronograph models and while some may see them as too large, a couple of great design choices make it very wearable. The case measures 42mm wide and a svelte 9.3mm thick. It’s a completely round with short and downward sloping lugs, making the lug-to-lug measurement just 46mm. On top is a curved sapphire crystal that stretches all the way to the edges of the case, making the watch all-dial. There are three versions of the Hamburg Chronograph that come in two case finishes - stainless steel or a stainless steel case with a bronze PVD treatment. Water resistance is not great at 50 meters, especially for a watch that references regatta chronographs of the 70s and is supposed to be used while yachting.

Like I said, there are three versions of the watch - the bronze version gets a dark green dial with orange and brown details, while the stainless versions come with a matte white dial with red details or a Regatta version which has a silver base, black outer ring and three sector rings that are colored black/yellow, blue and red. Despite the incredible use of color, all the markings on the watches are very simple, with thin fonts and almost architectural lines to show the outside minute track and internal hour track. There are two subdials - one that shows the 24 hour display and the other which has a 60 minute totaliser. At 6 o’clock is the date window which is framed in red on the white dial, orange on the green dial and red/yellow on the Regatta watch. The Regatta also adds a quirk to the date display as every odd number on the date wheel has been swapped out for the first 16-letter code flags. Sure it makes reading the date nearly impossible, but it’s incredibly cool.

Inside is the movement that allows Sternglas to keep this neat watch very cheap - the Seiko VK64 mecha-quartz movement. It is a quartz caliber with no running seconds hand, and the chronograph seconds hand ticks at four beats per second. The lack of the seconds hand hides the fact that this is a quartz watch at all, which is neat as some people are bothered by ticking seconds hand. The watches can be had on leather straps, nylon NATO-style straps or, in the case of the bronze version, on a very interesting stainless steel bracelet that has the same bronze PVD treatment.

All three versions of the Sternglas Hamburg Chrono are priced the same, at a pretty accessible €349 and the website has it on sale right now at an even better €319. See more on the Sternglas website.

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Byrne Slims Down Their Already Iconic Rotating Numeral Watch With The New Gyro Dial Meca

Choosing a custom dial for your watch is very cool, as it gives you, among other things, the possibility to choose what type of numerals you want to use. You know what’s even cooler? Having multiple numerals on one watch. And while this might seem - or even be - just a sweet gimmick, the relatively new watch brand Byrne does exactly this. They make no-dial watches with rotating cubes that display Roman, Arabic or any other type of numerals at the cardinal points. Or, like they put it - one watch, four faces. And now they’ve introduced the Gyro Dial Meca, a brand new line for the brand with a much smaller case.

The new case of the Byrne Gyro Dial Meca is made out of grade 5 titanium and measures 36mm wide and 12.5mm thick, with a 38mm lug-to-lug. It looks very much like the existing Byrne models, with a brushed and polished finish, but with the crown dislocated from the 3 o’clock position to 12 o’clock. On both sides of the watch you get box-shaped sapphire crystals. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is very much in the Byrne wheelhouse. While they do sometimes have metal brushed dials, the most iconic Byrne models actually don’t have a traditional dial, but rather a Meteorized Blue colored rhodium plated baseplate of the movement. The plate has four cutouts at the cardinal points where the four rectangles twist every time the time passes midnight. Or noon, if you so choose. This means you get four faces that Byrne calls Roman, Arabic, Ghost and Sport. While the Roman and Arabic are self explanatory, Ghost gives you an all blank minimalistic approach while Sport has raised numerals for added depth and texture.

Along with the new case, there’s a new movement. Called the calibre 5557, it’s still made by Le Temps Manufacture in Fleurier. It’s a hand wound movement that beats at 28,800vph and has a 60 hour power reserve. The skeletonized movement showcases sandblasted, rhodium-plated mainplates and bridges that are straight-grained and finished by hand. The watch comes on a grained blue rubber strap secured by a titanium pin buckle, with the option of a deployant clasp.

Price for the new Byrne Gyro Dial Meca is set at €25,850, without VAT. See more on the Byrne website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Road-Testing The Baltic Tricompax × Tour Auto 2024 On Two Stages Of The Classic Car Rally Across France

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Hands on with the Vacheron Constantin Overseas Tourbillon 

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A review of the Parmigiani Fleurier Toric Small Seconds

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The Amida Digitrend brings back the '70s with its digital driver's watch

While the Amida comes from this same era, it's decidedly different. The 316L stainless steel case is shaped kind of like a car body. The Digitrend measures 39.6mm wide and 39mm long. The jumping hour display is read through a dashboard-like register. At its thickest, the Digitrend is 15.6mm, but it slopes to just 6mm. The case is entirely brushed, the right choice for a big hunk of steel on the wrist.

Read the whole review on Hodinkee

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• More than 30 years after its introduction, Magic: The Gathering continues to have a stranglehold on tabletop gamers’ attention and wallets. Nick Zarzycki’s fascinating feature doesn’t just chronicle Magic‘s history and development in a way outsiders (like yours truly) can understand, or explain the economics behind its continuing evolution. Most interestingly of all, it does so through the eyes of Richard Garfield, the man who designed the game to begin with—and watched it become a juggernaut only tenuously connected to his original brainchild.

• I LOVE when somebody can write a whole book on what seems to be a rather mundane topic. Like, for example, paper. More specifically, paper used as LSD blotters. When LSD first hit the counterculture in the 1960, it was ingested via sugar cube or colored tablet. It wasn’t until a decade later that tiny perforated paper squares became the preferred way to deliver the powerful psychedelic. In this fascinating excerpt from Erik Davis’ book Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium, the journalist theorizes about why blotter proved the ideal carrier for LSD—part communion wafer, part pop-culture collectible, and part stamp granting passage to new realms.

• The recent Apple “Crush” ad which promotes the new iPad Pro caused a lot of controversy. Like, a lot. And it’s incredibly weird that Apple would do something like it. This is an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, one of my favorite film critics of our time - Matt Zoller Seitz - explains why the ad is disturbing, destructive, and a slap in the face to all artists, musicians, and people who create for a living.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

After Antarctica follows legendary polar explorer Will Steger’s journey as an eyewitness to the greatest changes to the polar regions of our planet. Now, thirty years after his historic expedition across the coldest continent on Earth, Steger heads out on the ice once again, at a time when he is not only known for being the first in history to complete these historic feats - he is also the last.

💵Pre-loved precision

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• SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.

• LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

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-Vuk