Now, to be fair, Citizen actually brought this out last month. But, 2020 does it’s thing, and it slipped from our immediate memory. Smart watches aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so more competition in the arena is a good thing. What is it that the Citizen CZ Smart brings?
To begin with, under the hood of the Citizen CZ Smart is the Google Wear OS. This means you’ve got an established platform, with it’s own ecosystem of applications to get on there and customize. While it does sort of proscribe some things about how the watch behaves, I do like that a “generic” smart watch (versus a sport-specific one) relies on a common, known OS, rather than relying on something a brand decides to come up with.
At a high level, that means that the Citizen CZ Smart is bring things like these to your wrist:
- Google Assistant, Google Pay, and Google Fit (with functions like workout tracking, heart rate measurement, goal-setting and more).
- Other features: Agenda, Alarm, Calendar, Contacts, Stopwatch, Timer, Translate, Smart Battery Modes, Enhanced Phone Dialer App, Wellness Apps with Sleep Tracking, Battery-Optimized Activity?Mode and Cardio Level Tracking.
- Citizen is also?including pre-approved installation of third party apps Spotify, Noonlight and Strava on CZ Smart.
Of course, the Citizen CZ Smart relying on Google Wear also means that you can customize the dial to your own tastes. We’ve got some photos here of the stock “dials” that you can leverage (complete with Citizen branding), but you should be able to customize it even further, if our experience with prior Google Wear watches is any guide.
Now, if you think you want to get one of these Citizen CZ Smart watches onto your wrist, they are available now at $395 on either a bracelet, textile strap, or rubber strap. And yes, at that pricepoint, they’re competing with the segment heavy, the Apple Watch. Time will tell if Citizen’s entry will go the distance. citizenwatch.com
