Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is my second Google WearOS smartwatch. I picked up this one because it has more "style" than my previous smartwatch. This really is a beautiful watch. I opted for the black silicone band which is plenty long for my rather large wrists. It fits snuggly (w/o being too tight) which is important for the "health" functions of the watch. I do wish Citizen offered a wider variety of watch "faces," however. Compared to other brands, this watch only has 4 faces unique to Citizen. (A fifth, universal "Google Fit" face is an option as well.) I suspect, as with my previous smartwatch, the manufacturer will add more faces over time. I like the screen. It feels big and bright. It does not run the latest and greatest processor and as a result, I am taking a star away because I suspect that the lack of improvement in battery runtime from my "other" smartwatch to this smartwatch is essentially non-existent. Like my 1.5yr old former watch, I struggle to get a full day (12+ hrs) of use out of the watch with the default "everything running" settings. Consequently I have spent a couple of days tweaking the settings such as "blackout" the screen after 5 seconds, use bluetooth over wifi, cut notifications down to just emails and texts, turned off "answer phonecalls from watch," etc. to make it match my usage needs. The watch performs swiftly even though it uses an older model processor, but unfortunately it does not have the benefit of improved efficiency that comes with the newer processors. The watch does charge fast. I think it got up to 80% in approximately 45 minutes. Wireless charging is nice but be careful to make sure you "seat" it on the magnetic charger properly. I was sloppy and did not seat it properly on day 2 of ownership. That was mildly frustrating as I did not have an extra charger at the office to boost it when it gave out completely. Setup was easy. Make sure you have the WearOS app, turn bluetooth on on your phone, then follow the "touch to begin" instructions. As for the apps, again, in reality all I really need/want are texts, emails, calendar reminders and incoming phone numbers to appear on my watch screen. Otherwise, I really just want date and time. The heart monitoring and Google Fit app are important to many users. I do use the app on both the watch and phone to track my exercise and overall habits, but I read the data on my phone, not the watch. Given my battery life experience, I don't think this watch would be good for "sleep monitoring." You'd likely need to work in a pre-bedtime charge or be ready to charge it first thing. Plus, it is a big watch so it might not be comfortable for overnight wearing. I cannot talk to the water resistance spec of the watch (up to 3ATM, 30 meter) because I am honestly scared to get any watch wet! Overall I am pleased with my watch choice because of its design. I trust the Citizen brand, I know what WearOS devices are capable of. I am disappointed I am not getting better battery life without the need to tweak the settings. I'd likely get more out of the watch (apps, features, etc.) if I wasn't so worried about whether or not it will make it through my hectic work day. But given the watch is a "tech accessory" to my daily life--not a tool I rely on exclusively--I am satisfied and consequently would recommend the watch to someone with similar tastes and needs. This is a good starter watch but its battery life might not make it the right choice for someone looking to step up their smartwatch game.

Works for about a year. And Best Buy should be called worst buy

Lost conectivity with Google i have to set up every single time

Overall a nice watch, but feature for feature, not ready to leave Apple Watch over it. I like diver watch look while having smarts built in and why I gave it a shot. I wish there was a little more weight to the watch though. As an Apple ecosystem guy, of course there are limitations with using this in conjunction with my iPhone. Though the watch and read/write to your activity and health, it doesn’t feed that information in a format that allows your activities rings to register progress. The watch faces available through the Wear OS app are limited. Any new faces have to be downloaded through Google Play…on the watch. Disappointing. The alarm works, but unfortunately it rings my phone, even though I have the watch setup on vibrate. I’ve become accustomed to my vibration only mode on Apple Watch so that I don’t wake my wife in the morning. If you don’t have a smart watch and you’re looking to buy one without spending the coin on an Apple Watch, I can see this suiting your needs. If you’re already an Apple Watch user thought, stick with it and hope they come out with some more traditional design. Not likely to happen though.

This watch paired up with my smartphone via bluetooth and also wifi to my router fairly easily, also updated its firmware really easily right after setup was complete. The body of this watch is big, which provides a big face for the digital screen to show information, making it fairly easy to see things at a glance from normal distance. You can choose from a variety of watch faces, and since it is a Wear OS based smartwatch, you have a lot of choices if you want customize further. I like the inclusion of GPS, Heart Rate, and other monitoring items, letting you leave your phone behind for a bit while doing certain activities. The data will still be there for when you sync up later. The sleep monitoring function has worked very well, showing transitions from light sleep to restful sleep. It recharges fairly quickly ( I recharge it once a day while I am down for a bit during/after last meal of the day time). The processor seems pretty powerful on this watch, I've noticed no slow down when using or monitoring any of the functions like GPS, Heart Rate, Excercise Mode, receiving calls, reading texts, and notifications. I like the ability to take phone calls right on the watch. I also like being able to pause/play my music or audio books from the watch easily and intuitively. Its also really easy to use email notifications to quickly delete unneeded email messages from the watch. Smartwatches have come a fair way since my last use of a Wear OS device. I would surely recommend this to a friend who doesn't mind the large size of this watch.

I'm using the Citizen CZ Smart watch with a Samsung S10 Android phone, The watch works and looks great. Integration with Google Fit is seamless. Overall, the watch performs exactly as expected and is easy to use once set up. At first, I could not get the watch to sync with Google Fit. I probably spent 2 days resetting to factory and reinstalling everything. Spent hours Google searching the issue without solving the problem. Called Citizen tech support, they were pleasant but after 30 minutes of trying stuff without resolution had to give up. My Google account is a G Suite account from my company, not a personal Google gmail account, i.e., my Google account ends in my company's domain name, not gmail.com. That was the problem. For some reason, Google Fit would not work with my G Suite account. I'm the administrator and couldn't find any setting to change to allow it. Google support had no idea. So out of desperation I signed up for a free gmail account and added that to my phone and assigned it to Google Fit. Then added that account to the watch, and voila, everything is working as it is supposed to. Google Fit is happy, I get all my work notifications on the watch, and life is good. One other setup quirk I ran into was the step counter on the watch wouldn't show any data until I installed the Google Fit app on my phone and gave the app permission to access the sensors. Now if I don't have the watch on my wrist but I have my phone in my pocket, the phone still counts steps and syncs it back to the watch display. i find it very slick. The product documentation is very sparse so there was a lot of exploration to do to discover all the features and settings. Normally I would take off 1 star or more for issues like these, but in the end the watch is so good I decided not to reduce the rating. Overall, after solving a couple setup problems that most people would never encounter, I really like this smartwatch and recommend it.

The first “nice” watch I bought myself after college in 1980 was a Citizen (about $800 in today’s dollars). I loved that watch so much I had the crystal replaced twice, the stainless steel band replaced once, and the quartz movement replaced once, all by Citizen service over the years. I have never had a smart watch, so when the opportunity came to review a Citizen smart watch, I jumped at the chance. I have been aware of smart watches for a few years now, but have continued to wear a high-end, automatic-wind, analog watch with a simple date complication, and continued to dig my iPhone out of my pocket every time I need to view a notification on it. Also having had some episodes of atrial fibrillation over the past decade, monitoring my heart rate via a watch was of great interest to me. My first impression of the Citizen CZ was, “My, this thing is big”. The case diameter is 46mm and my daily-wear watch is 36mm in size. I have small wrists at 6 & 1/2 inches, so I had to remove all but one of the removable links from the stainless steel band to get the watch to fit properly, and I did need a watch pin removal tool to do this. It would have been nice if Citizen included one as they can be purchased for a very modest amount of money - note that this is not an issue for the models with a silicone rubber watch band. To attach the watch band to the watch case (it ships separated in the box), no tool is needed and the captive pins on the band are a clever design and easy-to-use. I had some issues getting the watch set up and working properly and in my internet travels I found that the CZ Smart is using a chipset that is an older model that other smart watch companies have used. This was kind of disappointing considering how fast electronics age and new versions are released. The watch comes packaged with very skimpy documentation and relies on YouTube videos to instruct the user. The ones that are currently available cover just the basics of the watch’s functions and leave the user to experiment and figure out a lot of things on their own. Not really the kind of experience I would expect for this price point and from a company of this caliber. I found the watch a little frustrating to get dialed in to my liking as there are a variety of “Settings” scattered about a number of menus in the software and it is sometimes hard to remember where to again find one of the adjustments you made when you want to make a change to it. I could have looked in the instructions, but… Battery life is extremely disappointing. I do not have the display set to “Always-On”, and I also have it set to a 5-second “Time-Out” period to minimize the amount of battery drain, but it won’t make it through a whole 24 hour period on a single charge. I think I might need to turn off “Tilt-To-Wake” as regular arm movements will make the display light up when you don’t intend to view it. But that then makes checking the time a two-handed affair where you have to touch the screen or push the crown, which is not at all convenient. I am not a “power user” by any means, but I still end up charging the watch before bedtime to track my sleep and again during the day when the watch automatically goes into “Extended” battery mode as the battery gets low. If someone is using this watch as an adjunct to their cell phone to make their business day more efficient, you might want to keep a charging cable at home and one on your desk at work. If you separate the watch from your cell phone far enough to get out of Bluetooth range, they will not automatically reconnect when they get back into range, and you have to manually reconnect them. That does not always go smoothly either. The watch has two separate Bluetooth connections to your cell phone if you are going to use the watch to make or receive a phone call (you do not have to set it up this way, however). I also noticed that reminders for calendar events seem kind of glitchy - some don’t appear at all and some appear more often than they should (all-day events show up on two consecutive days). I suspect this might be because the watch uses an Android operating system and my cell phone is an iPhone and it has been my experience that those two environments don’t always play well together. Aesthetically the CZ Watch is pleasant enough, but it mimics a “tool watch” with a simulated timing bezel…that does not rotate, it just looks like a rotating bezel with markings. Even though the watch is large in diameter, it is not obnoxiously thick. The software comes with five different watch faces preloaded, but if you don’t care for them you can get more from the Google Play store. I was kind of disappointed in the native faces as they are rather generic looking and lack enough customization to please everyone - I would have liked an analog dial with a sweep second hand and a day-date “window” (rather than a second time zone). This would have been a great opportunity for Citizen to show off some vintage and current Citizen dial designs. Based on my admittedly limited time with the Citizen CZ Smart and what I have read about it on the internet, I suspect the average user with an Android-based smart phone would have an “average” user experience with it, but rather than 3 stars, I am giving it only 2 stars because of my less than satisfying experience using it with an iPhone, the old chip, and the premium price tag it carries.

For awhile Ive been thinking of getting a Smartwatch and since Ive been mainly a Samsung guy I thought if getting one from them. Well Im glad I finally decided to get one because it is awesome. The watch itself is well protected in the box with foam to keep it safe. In the box itself you get of course the watch, bands, a charging cable, and guides. It does not come with a power adapter, but at this point most people have several laying around the house so I understand this cost cutting decision. The first thing I noticed is the build. It is extremely well built and looks very high end. It fit great without and need to modify and is very comfortable. I went years without a watch so I thought it would bother me, but in no time I got used to it. Set up was pretty straight forward. I like the magnetic charging cable. It makes it a lot more easy to connect to charge vs. a regular USB type plug in. Ran through the set up with updates, etc. and had no issues getting everything ready to go. After set up you can choose up to 5 different “faces” as well as different colors/ themes. I didnt see any way to download more, maybe this can be added in an update. At first I was a bit overwhelmed with all this thing can do. Like I said its my first smartwatch so it took a bit to get use to it. But then I just decided to use it similarly to how I use my smart phone. Im pretty “simple” when it comes to my phone and although it has so many things it can do I only use it for calls, time, alarms, texts, internet, etc. So I took the same approach to the watch. I set it up and use it mainly for time, calls, etc. Im sure in “time” pun intended Ill use it for a lot more as I get on the upper end of the learning curve. But I would much rather have it capable of doing a lot more than I initially use it for vs. missing features. So as I go I will keep trying new things and learning more which is all part of the fun of a new piece of tech. So overall I am very happy with my new and first smartwatch. The build and look is incredible. Fully customizable. The display is crisp and easy to read, it has plenty of volume for calls, etc. It has so many features I look forward to trying out, and despite it not being the first one made I am still amazed at just how much tech can be put into something so small. Love my Citizen!