Eco Drive watches - Any good?

In theory it sounds like a good idea. They appear to use a solar cell to charge a Li-Ion battery. But Li Ions don't last forever either, they are generally rated at 500 charge cycles or so.

Think I can get 10 years out of one of these?

I recently ordered an AquaLand Eco-Drive. The manual doesn't give a time frame on when the battery will eventually have to be replaced. The only thing the manual states is that the battery will not require periodical replacement.

I also have a Bulova titanium Marine Star, it's also a solar powered quartz. I bought it back in 1997 and it is still running like I bought it yesterday. It only loses about 1-2 seconds a month.

I have one and I like it alot. I think it's SS and it's held up very well. It took about 6 months of abuse for scratches to really start appearing on it. I do hate the date featuer because I've got to reset it most months .

This is the nicest watch I've owned w/o getting into stupid expensive watches. When I'm ready to start going there ($500+) I'll probably start with one of the nicer Tissots. They are some of the best values in real high-end complicated watches with no-bs Swiss mechanicals.

I have a citizen skyhawk titanium eco drive. It's light as hell, a few coworkers think it's painted plastic. The eco-drive movement's pretty nice. Consider that 90% of the time if you have a button down desk job, your watch is in your sleeve and for a good 7-8 hrs a day it's in the dark while you're sleeping, the watch is smart enough to shut off the mechanicals if it senses no light for about 2 minutes. Once you lift your sleeve or expose it to light, it's quite a show to watch all the hands whizzing into their respective positions within about a second.
I've put it through about 3 years of heavy nonstop use, there are a few scratches on the sapphire and a whole lot of them on the band and casing, since I work with concrete sometimes and the chunks of quartz and whatnot in there really take a toll on the watch.
It's accurate enough that it loses or gains about a second every 3-4 months (yes mine's that accurate). Maybe I got lucky on the movement lottery or something. But it's very satisfying whenever I pull back my sleeve to check the time, have all the hands whiz back into their positions, and when the guy on the radio says "it is now 9pm, *beep*", my watch almost always lands right smack on 0 seconds when I hear the beep.

Eco Drive is pretty reliable, you will hear much more earlier production (5M4x or before) seiko kinetic capacitor failure than eco drive cap failure.

don't quote me on that, but i think i've heard on the SCWF that the citizen cell should hold 70-80% of the original charge capacity in 20-25 years

I also have an Eco-Drive Skyhawk Titanium, and it's been very good to me. I got it in early 2002, and have worn it daily since then with no trouble. A few chips in the crystal (what do you call the window when it's not crystal?) from the odd bang against something, but the band still looks good, and it still works perfectly.

I work in a dark office ("the cave" as I call it) in Seattle (lots of overcast) and even so, the battery meter never shows any discharge. It is pretty cool watching the hands scroll back into position.

My biggest complaint with the watch is that the beeps it's capable of uttering for alarms or whatever are really anemic. I'm sure the alarm would never wake me up, since it's so quiet. Oh, and the slide rule around the bezel isn't very accurate, but it's probably within 10% all around, and 2% in most places. Good enough for what I use it for (the odd currency conversion or reckoning of gas mileage).

What is the "SCWF"? Some kind of watch forum? I'm not sure I want to know. I don't need another money pit.

SCWF is "Seiko Citizen Watch Forum". You might also try the Poor Mans Watch Forum- pmwf.com.

I have quite a few mechanical watches but I also have a couple of EcoDrives and I have faith in them. I have a couple of quartz watches and their batteries seem to die frequently and at the wrong time. Theoretically that isn't a problem w/ the EcoDrives.

+1 on SCWF

My wife and i both have eco drives with no problems, however i still prefer seiko automatic divers.

It is my understanding thats it actually a capacitor that gets charged in the newer versions. Whatever it is it lasts for six months without light if fully charged

I'm thinking a LiIon battery would only last 10 yrs (**EDIT- see next post) at best. If an efficient watch were to use a large Li Primary like a CR2016 you can sometimes get 8 yrs. I have a timex with a 2016 that has at least 5yrs on the orginal battery. With the trend towards big watches there would be no reason to not use CR2025 or CR2032s for even longer runtimes.

I hope it is has been changed to a capacitor since that should not wear out. I found some old descriptions of the Eco-Drive system that called it a LiIon battery. It seems that Eco Drive has only been around for 7 yrs or so, not exactly proven technology.
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/citizen_eco_drive_watch_review

I also found pics about changing the "capacitor" on a Seiko Kinetic and the pic of the "capacitor" clearly showed that it was a LiIon battery even though they called it a capacitor. If Seiko ditched the Kinetic mechanisim they would have room for a really big battery that alone could last 10 yrs.
http://tinyurl.com/spj4o

So I'm thinking the whole thing might be a marketing Gimmick! But I liked the looks of the watch and it was only $81 and I had a $50 Gift certificate. So I went ahead and bought one

OK I finally found some info on Citizens Japanese website with some marketing material from 2002.
http://www.citizenwatch.co.jp/bsl_2002/eco-drive_book/p21_22.html

After 20 yrs the charge capacity is 80%

The Seiko Kinetics used to use an actual capacitor, but they switched to a rechargeable battery when the capacitor-based models proved to be unreliable (the capacitors died very quickly). I believe the Eco Drive watches contain a rechargeable battery; some models may also add a small capacitor.

cave dave said:

OK I finally found some info on Citizens Japanese website with some marketing material from 2002.
http://www.citizenwatch.co.jp/bsl_2002/eco-drive_book/p21_22.html

After 20 yrs the charge capacity is 80%

Click to expand...

I wonder if the mechanicals will last that long.

I have a Citizen Ti Eco-drive which I used to use for diving but I don't use it any more. You have to keep it somewhere in the light or it stops after 3-4 weeks. Doesn't have to be bright light, but it's a nuisance as it means you can't put it in a drawer or bag and leave it there for too long. It wasn't very accurate anyway. I now use a Ti Traser H3 Commander instead - much better.

I have two Eco Drive watches -- one is a Calibre 8700 perpetual calendar with nice two-tone bracelet; the other is a Blue Angels Skyhawk. Both keep good time and will run for several months without being worn. When not worn they are stored either in a drawer (no light) or in a watch box on my dresser in a spot that receives little light.

The SkyHawk actually has some additional power saving modes where the hands will stop moving but it will continue to maintain correct time internally. Pull it out of the drawer, and the hands will quickly move for a few seconds until they display the correct time. In this power saving mode it should maintain correct time for more than a year.

I got one as a wedding gift last year and so far it's been great! I love it, never leaves my side and still looks good.:twothumbs

I have an econ-drive, which turned a year old yesterday (it was a Christmas present last year).

I guess mine must be an older model, since it doesn't stop the hands in the dark. I work in an office, and wear long sleeves, and it never seems to run short on juice. It's pretty easy to read in the dark. It promises to be way more reliable than anything that requires battery replacement. After having the battery replaced, waterproof watches are no longer waterproof, so if this battery lasts 20 years, as Citizen claims, there is a potential that this watch could last 20 years for me.

That's all the good news. The bad news is that this one I have isn't very accurate. It will get to be a minute slow in just a couple of months, and I don't think that it loses at a constant rate. I'll start rating it once reception improves a bit, and I can get WWV again.

Nels, only some of the models offer the power saving modes (hands stop after a few minutes of darkness, etc). Lack of these power saving modes does not necessarily indicate an older model.

If the watch is running a minute slow after 2 months, then it's out of spec and should be able to be adjusted by Citizen. Even so, 1 minute slow is still vastly better than a mechanical watch -- which could be 1 minute slow after 1 week! (I'm wearinig a mechanical watch right now -- but this one is more accurate than many...)

Believe it or now, a coworker and I both have the same watch, we both set it to atomic time twice a year and it holds to within 2 seconds over 6 months. I know cause when I hear on the radio, "welcome back to 1010 wins news, the time is now 9pm (beep)", I look at my watch and it'll hit 0 seconds dead on. So I guess it's not only mine but like I said before, we might just get lucky. It is pretty cool when we say something's gonna happen and without having to calibrate, we can syncronize it down to the second at work.