We are now in the era of the GPS watch – which is a segment that, in my opinion, defines the apex of traditional electronic watch technology. In this review of the Citizen Promaster Navihawk GPS replica watches UK, I will discuss what makes this product so impressive, why I like it, what it is not, and what the future might hold for truly useful watches of this kind.
It is difficult to consider how to talk about Citizen GPS replica watches UK once again, as we have been covering modern GPS-equipped timepieces for quite some time. While Citizen didn’t invent the GPS watch, it did arguably start the modern trend of “self-sufficient” GPS timepieces with the introduction of the Citizen Satellite Eco-Drive back in 2011. Today, there is a healthy competition between the big three Japanese watch makers – Casio, Seiko, and Citizen – to each promote their own take on the modern GPS watch.
What is a modern GPS watch in this context? For me, a modern GPS watch is self-sufficient (self-charging battery, or a battery that lasts a long time), does not need to connect to a host device (like most smartwatches do), is durable (can be taken on adventures), and is able to offer a large amount of utility to the wearer. While brands like Garmin have their own GPS watches, it is the Japanese who are leading the pack when it comes to modern self-sufficient GPS watches, in my opinion. Thus, many timepieces which have very short battery lives (smartwatches), or have other ergonomic or durability downsides, should not be included in this particular category of GPS watches.
Of course, the idea of a GPS watch is a beautiful thing. Evolving from Citizen cheap fake watches which receive radio signals (where available) from stationary atomic clocks around the world, GPS watches receive signals from global positioning satellite arrays. These constantly beamed signals offer the time and calendar information, as well as location information (time zone). Thus, a modern GPS watch is able to either manually or automatically receive these signals so that the time on your wrist is perfectly accurate.
Mechanical watches are accurate to a few seconds a day, while traditional quartz movements are accurate to a few seconds per month. Combine a quartz movement with the ability to update itself with GPS signals, and you are talking about the ability to have perfect accuracy anywhere on the planet assuming you have line-of-sight to the sky.
Moreover, Citizen’s Eco-Drive movements are light-powered. Citizen produces special Eco-Drive dials which allow light to enter through the dial to a photo-voltaic cell right underneath. The trick that Citizen is able to offer versus its competitors is a dial that allows light to enter, but does not look like anything but a traditional watch dial. In the context of the Citizen Promaster Navihawk GPS, what I like about it so much is that it feels like a traditional watch with the light-powered and GPS-equipped elements of the movement being more or less hidden or secret.