****This first paragraph is a summary update after well over a year with the watch.  I love this thing.  It looks great. It has performed flawlessly.  I've used the chronograph feature heavily for cooking steaks, etc. (although cell phones are pretty good for that).  It is easy and intuitive to set the time zones.  It is addictive to always have absolutely perfect time on your wrist.  The minute hand moves every 15 seconds, while the sweep second hand stays spot-on.  My only complaint is that the only foreign zone is London.  One more could have covered much of Western Europe.

***The rest of this review was done right after I bought the watch, based in part on my experience of several years with another Citizen eco-drive atomic.  I'm updating the review now that I've now had this one three months.  With a collection of some of the world's best watches on hand, I now prefer this one.  It looks as good as about any watch at any price; it's as accurate as any watch at any price (it's not possible to be more accurate in any useful way); and it is totally self-sufficient.  All you have to do is wear it.  You never set it; you never change batteries.  I've learned to love the band, which is easy-on/easy-off and looks expensive.  The watch is big enough to look current and stylish, but not childishly bulky and clunky.  It is equally at-home in a board room or ball room, or  on the golf course.  I've not babied it, but it looks identical to the way it did on the day I opened the box.  In spite of the fact that I was already jaded by its predecessor, it has grown on me. Now on to my original review...***

Three years ago, I bought the titanium Skyhawk version of the eco-drive atomic.  I have a Rolex, Breitling, and Tag, plus some very cool antique watches and other contemporary models.  But once I got used to the Skyhawk, I couldn't take it off.  There is something addictive about having absolute confidence that you know the time to the second.  You don't have to worry about batteries running down or mechanical winders, or any other keep-it-going issues.  I've never, ever had it read anything other than a full charge on the battery.  I wear long-sleeve shirts during the week, but the watch keeps charged, probably catching up on the weekend.  Every now and then I'll leave it out on the deck in the sun just to make sure it gets a full charge periodically, but I might wait more than 6 months between such chargings.

The Skyhawk has always worked flawlessly, and I have been fairly rough on it.  I'm personally not concerned at all about warrantees.

Summer before last, I was riding trains a lot in Europe.  When you come into a Swiss train station, they have these clocks mounted on posts by the tracks.  Every other post has a clock.  The clocks have second hands that you can see moving in synchronization.  There is nothing cooler than looking down at your watch and seeing your second hand moving in absolute synchronization with that line of Swiss railroad clocks.

I was at a conference a year ago and saw a guy wearing a Skyhawk.  I walked up and asked him about his watch.  Strangely, the guy he was talking to was wearing one too.  We all three agreed that once you've worn one for awhile, you don't want to be without it.

So I had a problem:  Whenever I wore another watch, I just didn't feel right until I got the Skyhawk back on.  Yet there were times that the industrial look of the Skyhawk wasn't appropriate.  The watch just doesn't go with cufflinks, if you know what I mean.  I needed to have a dressier looking watch that gave me the same perfection in performance and reliability of the Skyhawk.  The answer is the A-T, which looks more sophisticated while maintaining a high-tech look.

It is a significantly different watch from the Skyhawk.  When I first got the AT, the band took a little getting used to.  Initially, I was disappointed that the only European time zone was (oddly) London, but there is a work-around, and it's not what you'd think.  I've found that you can manually set the time to whatever you want, and as long as it's an integral number of hours different from where the watch thinks it is, the watch will keep the time perfectly.  So if you're in Paris or Rome, you can set the watch for London and advance it an hour.  There is a separate independent setting that makes the watch function without radio control, but you don't have to do that, and you shouldn't want to.

Once you tell the watch what month it is and where you are in the leap year cycle, it tracks the days perfectly, and you NEVER have to fuss with adjusting days.  Like I said, perfect time is addictive.

Currently anybody with a few tens of thousands of dollars can go in the watch-making business.  You can have faces and cases fabricated to your specifications and buy the works dirt cheap.  There is a pecking order for quartz watches in cost:  Chinese is cheapest; Japanese is next; and Swiss is the most expensive.  But if you buy works in any quantity, they're all pretty cheap.  Check eBay and see how many different watches you can buy for ridiculously low prices.  Everybody's jumped on the bandwagon of making cheap watches, and the quartz watches, even the Chinese, are really not that bad.  With this thundering herd of competition, the traditional watchmakers now find themselves in a different world.  Among the Japanese name brands, Citizen and Seiko are still the best.  I believe that in fit, finish, and features for the dollar, especially on chronographs, Citizen is the best among all brands, from all countries, period.  These eco-drive atomics are in a class by themselves that the cheap watch-makers can't imitate.  Lexus continues to pursue perfection in automobiles.  Citizen, i believe, has found it for watches in the crucial areas of convenience, reliability, and accuracy.