Smartwatches are the perfect combination of an activity monitor, notification centre, speakerphone, and more all in one. These new Citizen smartwatches with voice control and heart rate monitoring are a great way to get a lot out of a tiny little device. Let’s talk design, functionality, and Citizen’s new YouQ platform that helps you optimize your day for peak performance.
What is Citizen CZ YouQ?
Citizen is a watch brand that most people will recognize. With over 100 years of history, the brand has been designing classic timepieces for longer than I or anyone reading this has been alive. They’ve even pioneered some major watch technologies, like the first solar watch.
But the CZ line is new. It’s a line of smartwatches that comes with a whole spiel: Citizen calls it “CZ Smart with IBM Watson®” and it features an element that the brand has named YouQ. Unlike other smartwatches, which are typically designed to help you access your body’s raw data throughout the day, YouQ is a gamified approach to wearable technology. It combines your aggregate alertness scores and sleep data to create your personal Power Gauge. The Power Gauge graph shows you when your body is anticipated to peak and drop in alertness, giving you a window of time when you’re likely to be at your most effective and alert. Along with the gauge, YouQ will give you an Hourly Power Score plus Power Fixes to help you target your tired or unfocused periods.
So, instead of just being a push notification centre or step tracker, these CZ smartwatches are an AI-powered way to optimize your performance throughout the day. You can use all of these smartwatches with or without YouQ, but I thought it would be an interesting place to start off this review. As far as I know, it’s pretty unique. Every smart monitoring device has the data it needs to give you this type of info, but most brands either aren’t re-processing it or are presenting it in a different way.
I think this is a pretty cool technology. However, because it’ll present such different results for every individual, I’m going to focus this review more on the day-to-day capabilities of this range of Citizen smartwatches. If you buy one of these smartwatches to use YouQ, keep in mind that it takes about two weeks for the watch to form these graphs and suggestions—so purchase early if there’s a specific event or project that you’re trying to get into peak mental state for!
What’s in the box of a Citizen CZ Smartwatch?
In the box of each of these smartwatches, you’ll find a watch packed tightly on a foam base. It comes with a magnetic charging cable, a quick start guide, and product literature. What I really appreciate about these boxes is that they’re totally reusable: The foam is packed in really securely, but nothing is glued. So, you can reuse these well-made boxes really easily.
(Hey, a good box is a good box!)
Note that while all of these magnetic charging cables look the same, some have two prongs while others have one. If you purchase his & hers watches, make sure to remember that your charging cables may not be interchangeable. They’ll each magnetize to every watch, but won’t necessarily charge other models.
Citizen smartwatch compatibility
These smartwatches turn on by holding their large centre dial for three seconds. They ship charged, or generally ship charged, so I recommend charging them when they arrive but you may be able to get away with setting them up right out of the box. Citizen designed these watches to be both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatible and they work with iPhone and Android.
Citizen CZ Smartwatches are built on Google’s Wear OS 3. Some models (Smart Sport and Casual Touchscreen models but not Hybrid designs) contain a speaker and microphone so you can take calls right from your smartwatch. They’re voice compatible with built-in Amazon Alexa.
Sport vs Casual touchscreen watch features
There are three subcategories within the Citizen CZ watch line. Sport models offer silicone, leather, or stainless steel traps while Casual models come with a mesh bracelet-style watch band, stainless steel links, or silicone straps. Both of these options have a full touchscreen face and all three of these smartwatch designs use the same three-dial design. From the Sport and Casual watches, you can expect to find customizable watch faces, resizable watch bands, and a bevy of downloadable apps. Both of these watch types can track your heart rate, pulse oxygen levels, and sleep quality, and can push notifications and alarms to your wrist.
The Citizen CZ Smart Sport watches in this review are the PQ2 Sport 45mm in Black Bracelet (black on black bezel with a metal bracelet) and Black Strap (black bezel on silver lugs with a silicone strap). They charge in 40 minutes and run for 24 hours per charge. The PQ2 is not water-resistant, features an OLED screen, and is finished with Gorilla glass. It contains a gyroscope, an altimeter, a barometer, and an accelerometer.
The Citizen CZ Casual Touchscreen watches in this review are the PQ2 Casual 41mm in Silver-Tone Bracelet and Rose Gold-Tone Mesh. They’re built on the same software and hardware as the Sport watches, so they have the same capabilities and charge time.
Hybrid Citizen smartwatch features
Citizen Hybrid Smartwatches look and function a little differently from the brand’s Sport and Casual lines. While the other watches reviewed here are built on Citizen’s PQ2 watch, these hybrid watches are built on the Smart Hybrid Extreme.
If you sacrifice the OLED screen of a full touchscreen watch, you can gain a lot: In this case, an extra 17 days of battery life. These hybrid smartwatches have a MIP Display instead of an OLED watch face (still finished in Gorilla Glass). That means the display reloads slightly more slowly and does so in a finely pixelated fashion, and it looks seamless and matte—when they’re not in motion, these displays look like they’ve been printed, not projected.
Citizen’s Hybrid line of smartwatches can still push notifications to your wrist, scroll through messages, play music, control your smart home, monitor your blood oxygen levels, and more. They just go about their tasks slightly differently.
The Citizen CZ Smart Hybrid Extreme Smartwatches here are the 44pm GPS model in Silver and Black.
My experience with these Citizen smartwatches
Overall, I was really happy with these Citizen smartwatches. They’re well-built, stylish, and offer a ton of features with excellent app integration. On my smaller frame, I prefer the 41mm Casual design, but all three of these styles can be worn as unisex/genderless products.
My favourite feature in these watches wasn’t the new YouQ (though I admit that it’s very cool) but was, instead, the integration of pulse rate and pulse ox monitoring. Citizen advises you not to use their smartwatches as medical devices, but based on simultaneous readings from this watch and my actual pulse rate and blood pressure monitors, they’re spot on. For smaller wrists, I found I got a better reading with the watch face on the inside of my arm, but if you want to be constantly monitoring I’d recommend just wearing your watch slightly higher so it never loses contact during wrist motion.
These smartwatches are a great way to optimize your focus throughout the workday, track your daily activity levels, and stay on top of any irregularities in your body. Shop this line of Citizen smartwatches online at Best Buy today.
I am a student so this watch would help me manage my time without having to take out my phone.
The fitness tracker will help me stay on top of my progress.
I really like the aspect of the Smart notifications which would make my life easier so I don’t miss texts and calls. I also like the fitness monitoring and the pulse rate which would be helpful in my exercise classes as sometimes we are asked to check out pulse rate and I always mess up doing it.
Having a Citizen CZ smartwatch would make my life a little easier through accurate health and fitness tracking, allowing me to be more aware of my daily energy expenditure and ways that I can meet my health and fitness goals!
Help me track my daily activities to ensure I am getting enough exercise.
The sleep gauge would be so beneficial to me as I wake up so much in the night. As well the Heart Rate Monitor would be an added asset. Love the health features & the GPS.
I’m getting up in years . The health monitors are potential life saving features !
This watch will track my heart rate and pulse rate which would make life easier when I am doing long hikes.
I hike a lot and rely on GPS and location functions to make sure I’m going in the right direction and can also make my way back out on unmarked trails 🙂
Definitely the heart rate monitor and sleep tracking are features that would ease my health issues – they look great too!
These watches are classic and could help discreetly notify me of any notifications I may have waiting while in a meeting or at the office.
Having one of these watches would make my life easier because I would be able to explore and always find my way back due to the build in GPS and location services
The sleep gauge and alertness features would help me to ensure I get enough sleep and this is not something that I thought to track if I am feeling sluggish.
The GPS and location services is fabulous – I get lost in my back yard! Honestly, all these features are terrific.
This would make my life a little easier by taking out the guess work about my health and fitness journey by monitoring it for me.
Having regular reminders, and more specific data will help me understand the peak times to be most effective. It sounds incredibly interesting!
If I could track my daily activity I might be more likely to meet my exercise goals.
Built-in GPS and location service, because i tend to get lost very often. To be able to make and take calls on my watch is cool!!
Would make me more aware of my health.
YouQ will give me an Hourly Power Score plus Power Fixes to help me target my tired or unfocused periods
These watches would help with watching my heartrate ( not being used as a medical device) however being able to watch mt heart rate and sleep patterns help with my overall anxieties having a visual (on a screen on my wrist ) to remind myself to calm down lol plus they are all gorgeous!
The water resistance and long battery life of the hybrid model would make my life easier. I wouldn’t have to worry or recharge all the time.
These watches would make my life easier with the smart notifications
Having one of these watches would make my life easier because I would be able to explore and always find my way back due to the build in GPS and location services
Built-in GPS and location services because I love going hiking and tend to get turned around easily. This feature will give me some peace of mind.
Sleep tracking, so essential to optimal health for me.
I would love on of these for the heart rate monitor and the sleep tracking.
I would love the regular reminders – the hourly updates etc because I often mean to do more but then get wrapped up in work or reading etc.
The smart notifications will really help when I don’t have time to grab my phone at work
I would love the regular reminders – the hourly updates etc because I often mean to do more but then get wrapped up in work or reading etc.
This watch will make my life easier because I won’t have to guess how many calories I’ve burned.
I just turned 65 this year. This smart watch will help me better monitor my daily activities.
Heart monitor will stabilize my activities
That hybrid extreme watch looks to be about the best for usefulness/battery life.
optimize your focus throughout the workday, track your daily activity levels, and stay on top of any irregularities in your body. – just what the doctor ordered
YouQ will give me an Hourly Power Score plus Power Fixes to help me target my tired or unfocused periods
The health monitoring is very awesome
It would make my life easier to receive reminder notifications throughout the day with the Citizen CZ smartwatch.
That hybrid extreme watch looks to be about the best for usefulness/battery life.
Hi Rae! <3
optimize your focus throughout the workday, track your daily activity levels, and stay on top of any irregularities in your body.
The sleep tracking would be awesome
The short duration needed to chart Citizen CZ and long lasting battery life of 24 hours would definitely make my life a lot easier!
I would love on of these for the heart rate monitor and the sleep tracking.
I can use a new dress up watch
So many features that I love so how could my life not be improved with this awesome watch. It would help be keep on track with my fitness goals and love the heart monitor.
Would be nice to wear a nice looking watch.
I like that it is not overly bulky. The health monitoring is also awesome
The Power Gauge feature of this watch would make my life easier because I would be able to identify my peak energy times for maximum productivity.
This watch would help me make my life easier to track my health and fitness goals.
Built-in GPS and location services! Just because tend to get lost very often. To be able to make and take calls on my watch is a game changer!!
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