Citizen Celebrates 40 Years Of The Aqualand Promaster; Timex and NOAH Team Up For A Very Vintage Watch; Norqain Has An Ice Cream Themed Chrono; Breguet's Smaller Hand-Wound Type XX Chronographs

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. It’s time to get a Aqualand Promaster, isn’t it?

In this issue:

• Citizen Celebrates The 40th Anniversary Of The Aqualand Promaster With A Limited Edition

• Timex and NOAH Team Up For A Very Vintage Lighthouse Watch

• Norqain Is Ready For The Summer With The Ice Cream Themed Freedom 60 Chrono 40mm Enjoy Life

• Breguet Continues 250th Anniversary Celebration With Two Smaller Hand-Wound Type XX Chronographs

👂What’s new

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Citizen Celebrates The 40th Anniversary Of The Aqualand Promaster With A Limited Edition

Regular readers of this newsletter likely know my love for ana-digi watches. This obsession started for me with three watches — the Omega x33, the Breitling Aerospace and the Citizen Aqualand. While the first two of those were space-themed, the Citizen was a kind of magical mix of dive computer and rugged watch the company was known for. And it had some extremely cool functions, like an actual depth meter. The Aqualand has been around for 40 years, which Citizen is marking now with a limited edition Aqualand Promaster 40th Anniversary with a very cool look.

This new release is very similar to the original release. Like, almost completely identical. That means that you get a steel case with a wonderful matte grey finish that measures 50.7mm wide and 14.8mm thick. That 50mm+ width sounds huge, but is actually much smaller since a lot of that width is reserved for the asymmetrical part of the case that holds the depth sensor. You get gold-toned details on the knurled edge of the bezel, the pushers and the knurled screw-down crown. More gold can be found on the cover for the depth sensor, which can go down to 200 meters. Out back is a caseback with a 40th anniversary engraving.

The only slight changes happen on the dial, where the black base now gets a sunray brushed finish. On that, you’ll find gold-outlined luminous hour markers, oversized hour and minute hands, with a signature bright orange minute hand, and a gold-coloured seconds hand. The printing on the dial reads “Citizen Quartz” up top, and “Diver’s 200m” at the bottom. But most importantly, the small screen at the top remains the same and it’s wonderful.

Inside, you’ll find the Calibre C520, a quartz movement that is accurate to ±20 seconds per month and has a 2 year battery life. It also has a bunch of functions, including running time, calendar, daily alarm, a 1/100th of a second chronograph, an ascent alarm, a diving timer and the iconic depth indication. The watch comes on a black biomass-based black polyurethane strap with the iconic wave section at the top of the strap.

The new Citizen Aqualand Promaster 40th Anniversary is limited to 5,800 pieces worldwide, available now and priced at €497. See more on the Citizen website.

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Timex and NOAH Team Up For A Very Vintage Lighthouse Watch

Shaped watches are all the rage in the past few years — square, oval, tonneau, it seems that brands from all over the spectrum are putting out non-round watches. And it’s been a cool ride. Joining in on the fun now is Timex, who teamed up with American fashion label Noah to release the Lighthouse Watch, a kind of unique take on 1970s ellipse-shaped watch.

It’s quite obvious where the inspiration for this watch comes from. Taking many cues from the Patek Philippe Ellipse, the stainless steel case measures 31mm wide and 35mm tall, with 18mm wide lugs hidden in the case. The case has a gold coating on it, with a polished finish and a small crown on the right side. It’s also 30 meter water resistant, but you really won’t be taking this one swimming.

The dial is where the collaboration with Noah shows the best. The white base just get a pencil illustration of a lighthouse, which Noah co-founder Brendon Babenzien says have always had a symbolic meaning for him — a metaphor for Noah co-founder Brendon Babenzien. This has a danger of sounding a bit corny, but it’s actually really well executed, with a small Noah logo at 3 and a Timex script at 6 o’clock. The only other thing on the dial side are the slim gold hands.

Inside, you’ll find an unnamed quartz movement, which is exactly what you would want with a watch like this. It comes on a classic black leather strap, closed with a gold colored pin buckle.

The new Noah x Timex Lighthouse is available for presale now, with deliveries beginning in November. Price is set at €250. See more on the Noah website.

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Norqain Is Ready For The Summer With The Ice Cream Themed Freedom 60 Chrono 40mm Enjoy Life

The summer watch is a very special thing. There’s no set rules what makes a summer watch, it’s more of a vibe thing. It’s that one watch that looks best in the shade of a parasol, near a nice body of water, with too high temperatures and a chilly glass of refreshment. It’s not limited to just summer use, but it’s almost always the first one you reach for in the summer. And Norqain is joining in on the genre with their new Freedom 60 Chrono 40mm Enjoy Life. It might seem a bit on the nose, but it’s exactly what you want out of a summer watch.

The Enjoy Life model comes in the familiar Freedom 60 Chrono package, which means that it comes in a stainless steel case that measures 40mm wide, 14.9mm thick, with a 49.2mm lug-to-lug. A substantial size, sure, made to look even larger with the fact that it has a thin bezel that surrounds a double domed box style sapphire crystal. The case has brushed sides, with a plaque on the left size that has “Norqain” engraved into it, while the rest is fully polished to catch the summer sun. Flip the watch over and you’ll see an open caseback with an illustration of an ice cream cone with three scoops, matching the dial colors. On the right side are vintage-styled mushroom pushers and water resistance is 100 meters.

While the case is reserved, the dial goes all out. The white base is paired with three pastel color sub-dials — blue for the running seconds, pink for the 12 hour totalizer, and green for the 30 minute counter. Around the perimeter is a tachymetre track that’s split into thirds, each being the same colour as its corresponding sub-dial. You get applied silver hour markers and silver hands, both filled with lume. There’s a date window at 4:30 which has a small easter egg — on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th of every month, the date numeral is replaced with a small graphic of an ice cream cone.

Inside, you’ll find the Norqain N19 movement, which is essentially a slightly rebranded Sellita SW510, a cam-operated chronograph beating at 4Hz, with a 62 hour power reserve. The watch can be had on a three-link bracelet with brushed centre links, a white rubber strap or a brown alcantara strap. Those last two come with Norqain’s signature arrow stitches and can be optioned with either a folding or pin buckle.

The new Norqain Freedom 60 Chrono 40mm Enjoy Life is a limited edition, but I can’t exactly find to how many. Prices range from €4,490 to €4,750, depending on the strap options you choose. See more on the Norqain website.

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Breguet Continues 250th Anniversary Celebration With Two Smaller Hand-Wound Type XX Chronographs

When you start off a celebration with watches like the Classique Souscription 2025 and the Tradition Seconde Rétrograde 7035, it’s pretty clear that this will be a good year for Breguet, the storied watch maison that is celebrating its 250th anniversary. Many more watches are coming, but for now, we get two new versions of the historically-inspired Breguet Type XX Chronograph 2075, now in a smaller and more compact case, with a hand-wound movement.

Like so many Breguet models, the Type XX has quite the story behind it. The Breguet family has a very close connection with both military and civilian aviation, but they put their largest stamp on the industry when they answered the call of the French Air Force in the 1950s to equip pilots with chronographs. The result was the Type 20 (military) and Type XX (civilian) watches, one of the more legendary pilot’s watches of all time. Over the years, 4 generations of Type XX were made, in various sizes, materials and colors. This latest duo is one of the closest recreations of the original 1950s model. Also, people from Breguet say the Type XX and Type 20 collection “will evolve in terms of diameters, finishes and materials” in the near future. That’s very cool.

This new duo shares the same case, one that has short, wonderfully twisted lugs, and measures 38.3mm wide and 13.2mm thick, including the quite tall box-shaped sapphire crystal on top. The crystal is surrounded with a bidirectional bezel with a 12-hour scale. Both the bezel and case are made out of 18k Breguet gold, which is an alloy of gold, enriched with silver, copper and palladium. The case has satin finishes, with polished accents. Water resistance is 50 meters.

There are two dial options for you to choose from. The matte black is made out of anodised aluminium, a tribute to Louis Breguet, who pioneered the use of Duralumin sheet metal for his aircraft, marked by a small “Al” between 7 and 8 o’clock. It’s a big-eye bi-compax layout, with an oversized 15-minute counter at 3 o’clock and a running seconds at 9 o’clock. The Arabic numerals are printed in beige Super-LumiNova, the Breguet logo is applied, the main hands are syringe-shaped, made out of 18k gold, and the small minute hand is pear-shaped. The other option is a silver dial made out of solid 925 silver, again marked with “Ag925”. The dial has a tachymeter on the periphery, is vertically brushed, has applied baton markers and Arabic numerals. You also get different hands, pencil-shaped and done in gold, while the central seconds is blued steel and lumed. The bi-compax sub-dials are more traditional here and the same size, with a 30-minute counter at 3 and running seconds at 9.

Inside both of the watches you’ll find a new in-house calibre, based on the automatic calibre 728 introduced by Breguet in 2023. They are manually wound, feature a silicon hairspring, escape wheel and pallet-lever horns, a column wheel as well as a flyback function and a vertical clutch, beat at 5Hz and have a 60 hour power reserve. Since the movements have different sub-dial setups, the black version gets the Calibre 7279 while the silver model features the Calibre 7278. The movements are gilded in Breguet gold and the bridge has a hand-engraved decoration depicting the Breguet 19 aircraft in flight and the route it took in 1930. The rest of the movement features snailing, bevelling and circular-graining, and black DLC on the column wheel. The black version comes on a gradient black calfskin strap with an 18K Breguet gold pin buckle, while the silver gets a gradient blue calfskin strap and an 18K Breguet gold pin buckle.

The new black Breguet Type XX Chronograph 2075 is part of the regular collection, while the silver version is limited to 250 pieces. The black is priced at CHF 36,500, while the silver comes in at CHF 38,000. See more on the Breguet website.

⏲️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

• Could a decline in reading habits be leading to a regression to an “oral culture?” Could we be losing the critical thinking essential for liberal democracy? Levitz takes a rational, academic approach to these questions, considering the complexities of media evolution and its multifaceted impact on society.

• The headwinds buffeting Hollywood are no mystery. What’s also no mystery is that in AI, studio executives see a way to get more for much, much less. But as in so many industries, what benefits the distributor punishes the creator, and Lila Shapiro’s new feature for New York puts a grim new face to the phenomenon. One “ethical” AI startup, one AI startup fending off lawsuits from angry artists—and in between, an industry in flux.

• Marathoner Kelvin Kiptum was just arriving to the sport’s highest echelon when he died in a car crash in February 2024. As it turns out, his story is just one in a series that has befallen competitive runners from Kenya. For 1843, Jonathan W. Rosen reports from the training meccas of the Rift Valley region, painting a heartbreaking picture of an uphill course that all too often ends in tragedy.

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Thanks for reading,
Vuk