Citizen Eco-Drive Super Titanium AW0130 (Zenshin) AW0130-85L«Zenshin»

Imagen: Citizen, web oficial

The storyWhy this reference matters

In 1970 Citizen launched the X-8 Chronometer, the first titanium watch ever sold. Fewer than two thousand were made, because machining titanium cases back then was an industrial nightmare, and the name was deliberate: X for the unknown, 8 for the infinity symbol lying on its side, the material's infinite possibilities. That watch was crude, grey and barely finished. It was also half a century of head start on almost everybody else.

Pure titanium has a well-known flaw: it's light and it doesn't corrode, but it scratches with maddening ease. Citizen's answer was Duratect, a surface hardening treatment it first put into a commercial product in 2000 and which grew into what the brand now sells as Super Titanium. The figure Citizen repeats is blunt: five times harder than stainless steel and forty per cent lighter. That's the combination neither metal manages on its own.

This AW0130 is the way into that technology, and that's the point of it. Not a commemorative edition or a shop-window piece but an everyday three-hander with an integrated bracelet, run on light, good for eight months from a full charge. In some markets Citizen sells it as the Zenshin, which causes no end of confusion when you go looking online: same watch, same reference, two different surnames depending on which country you're standing in.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

A 39.5 mm case, 10 mm thick and barely 41.5 mm lug to lug, a set of proportions that wears like a considerably smaller watch than the spec sheet suggests. The whole thing weighs 91 grams with the bracelet fitted, which is roughly what a steel watch this size weighs with the case alone. That lightness is the first thing anyone notices when they try it on blind.

The -85L is the textured blue dial, with a black outer minute ring, silver detailing and luminous hands and markers. The calendar is a double one: day and date share the window at three. Sapphire crystal, 10 bar of water resistance and a Super Titanium bracelet on a deployant clasp with pushers.

The detail that defines the reference is the integrated bracelet: it grows out of the case, with no conventional lugs anywhere in sight. So no NATO on a Sunday afternoon and no leather strap on a whim. It also means that when you go hunting for information you'll have to cross-reference AW0130 with Zenshin, because catalogues in different countries use one or the other without warning.

CollectingWhat collectors check

The case for buying used is the material itself. A five-year-old Super Titanium usually looks better than a steel watch of the same age, because the surface treatment heads off most of the fine scratching that ages a case. That said, Duratect is a hardened surface, not armour plating: a hard knock leaves a mark that stays there, and it can't be dealt with as cheerfully as you'd polish steel.

The integrated bracelet demands extra care at purchase. The links are specific to this model, so a shortened example with the removed pieces long gone can simply end up too small for your wrist with no sensible way out. Ask about the links before you pay. The clasp, incidentally, is the part that collects the most complaints: basic next to the standard of the rest of the watch.

And the standard Eco-Drive check: the health of the rechargeable cell. Charge it in bright light, leave it a couple of nights in the dark and see that it's still running normally. A watch that stops quickly, or that starts ticking in two-second jumps, has a tired cell, and that's a workshop job worth knocking off the agreed price.

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Close relativesThe ones it gets confused with