The Citizen CZ Smartwatch was a quick shortcut for the brand, and it has failed

Citizen is a superb watch brand, one of the very best in terms of reliability for the price. It may not be cool and it may not be viewed as luxury by many, but if you buy a Citizen watch you could be using it trouble free for decades.

The brand decided to move into the smartwatch world with the Citizen CZ Smartwatch and it appears that it took the easy route by using their own case design and older technology.

At £299 the CZ is not inexpensive and the case design and metal components will be excellent, but the problem is in the inside.

The processor is the SDG 3100 which means that the battery will last just one day between charges. And everything else feels familiar.

If you buy the Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch for exactly 50% of the price of the CZ you get the same OS, same tech hardware and effectively the same watch inside the metal case. This also applies to some Skagen watches and other brands, which trend much lower in price compared to the Citizen.

They often say that you pay a lot for the name in the watch world, but rarely has this been as obvious as it is with what Citizen has produced here. I find it almost insulting that an 18 month old watch is being marketed as new simply because Citizen decided to move into this sector. Citizen needs to do much better.