[VIDEO] Review: Citizen’s “The Citizen” Reference AQ4103-16E

Here’s a thing I’ve come to realize about watches writing about them for five years. Most of them are exactly fine. They have some good qualities and some bad, but they tend to cancel each other out, resulting in something that’s perfectly acceptable and adequate but maybe not great. Truly exceptional watches are rare. Watches with no obvious faults, watches that make you rethink a brand, a technology, or your own taste. These are the watches I love to write about the most and I jump at the chance to do so. 

I’m not saying the Citizen “The Citizen” reference AQ4103-16E is a perfect watch without any faults, but I’m not not saying it either. It’s certainly exceptional by just about any measure, and it’s literally quite rare. And if you’ve never been exposed to a watch from the upper tier of Citizen’s range, it could certainly cause you to rethink the brand, but the good stuff at the high end of Citizen’s catalog has been an open secret for long enough that if you claim not to know much about it, well, you should probably just read Worn & Wound more often.