Review of the Citizen JV0010-08E

Up for review today is the Citizen JV0010-08E, also known as the 20th Anniversary Aqualand. It's a solar-powered dive watch/computer, sporting both analog hands and a medium-sized digital display. Citizen has made a lot of dive computers and watches over the years, but this is the first Aqualand that uses their Eco-Drive solar technology.

The features include:

    * It's a very large watch, 50mm by 17mm thick, weighing in at 135g with the integrated 25mm urethane strap.
    * Stainless steel case, with a brushed finish, matching buckle. The bezel is high-polish stainless steel. Screw-back case, no crown.
    * Power reserve of 6 months to 2.5 years, depending on power save mode.
    * The Citizen quartz U10 module is accurate to within 15 seconds per month.
    * Water and pressure sensors (water sensor on the right side, pressure on the left.) that let the watch automatically enter dive mode when depth exceeds about 4m (12ft)
    * Analog and digital depth meters, measures up to 100m (330ft). Out of the water, the depth gauge hand indicates power reserve (battery charge).
    * Three alarms, each in its own timezone.
    * World time in 42 cities plus UTC, 29 time zones.
    * Local and world time, second timezone on digital display.
    * Logging of up to 20 dives, each recording max depth, minimum temperature, total dive time, starting time and time zone.
    * After a dive, the watch automatically measures surface time and shows you the dive time and max depth of your last dive, so as to avoid getting the bends.
    * Electroluminescent backlight for the LCD display, and blue-glow lume for the hands, bezel and dial.
    * Unusually for a dive watch, the bezel is under the (mineral glass) crystal and fixed. Normally, you rotate the bezel to line up with the minute hand when you submerge; Citizen cleverly inverted this: When it switches to dive mode, the minute hand zips to 00 and starts timing the dive!
    * User-settable dive alarms for max depth, bottom time trigger sound as well as a red LED at 12 o'clock.
    * Also alarms if ascent rate exceeds 9m/minute (33ft/min)