Citizen Aqualand Duplex – When is 20ft not 20ft?

When you're 90ft underwater and your Aqualand’s depth gauge is telling you you’re at 20ft. Not good.

Background

Although it has been several years since I have taught students I have been a scuba instructor for over 15 years and have logged over 1,000 dives. In the beginning of my diving career I had a really nice Heuer dive watch. Yes, that was before Tag came on the scene as Tag-Heuer. The Heuer watch served me well but I became jealous of fellow instructors and divemasters who were using Aqualand dive watches with built in depth gauges. I resisted trading in my faithful Heuer for an electronic watch as I just wasn’t too sure about their reliability.

Well I finally caved in and purchased a Citizen Aqualand Duplex and I’ll share with you my experience with this watch over the past few years.

The Watch

The Citizen Aqualand Duplex dive watch combines the features of both an analog as well as a digital watch. The watch features a one-way ratcheting bezel, a multi-function depth meter, stop watch function, and alarm. The Duplex is depth rated to 200m (666ft) but the depth display will only provide data to 260ft. The watch comes with a rubber wrist strap with a tang style clasp that is adjustable for various wetsuit thicknesses and features two retaining rings as well as a set of fairly useless no decompression limits. (If you are a recreational diver you should be using your certification agencies tables and if you are a tech diver or commercial diver you will be using your own custom set.) The case is 100% titanium which weighs 40% less than steel and resists corrosion extremely well. The crystal is a very durable mineral glass that has a scratch resistant multi-layer coating. The watch features a screw down crown which is pretty standard on better dive watches to ensure water resistance at depth. The black watch face features two LCD windows and Tritium luminous 5 minute markers. The hands are alpha style and Tritium luminous with a red outline.

Features

Surface

On land the Duplex acts like a two time zone watch with the ability to set the analog hands for one time zone and the upper LCD digital display to another. This is a very handy feature when traveling to keep track of time back home. The alarm can be used as a wake up alarm but is fairly quiet so heavy sleepers should plan on keeping the watch close to your head. The lower LCD window can be switched to display seconds of the date and day. The chronograph can measure up to 24 hours in 1/100 of a second and can be used for lap timing.

The Duplex features three buttons used to change the LCD mode and to set various functions. The lower left button switches the watch between time, alarm, chronograph, dive log, and dive alarm modes. The upper right button switches the lower LCD display between seconds and day/date mode. The upper left button is used to set the watch.

Dive

The Duplex will switch into dive mode automatically when the water sensor detects enough moisture. Upon decent below 1m (3.3ft) the pressure sensor will start displaying current depth in the upper LCD window and alternate dive time and water temperature time in the lower LCD window. The dive alarm can be set to go off if either depth or time limits are exceeded. The Duplex also includes an ascent rate warning that automatically sounds for 10 seconds if the ascent rate exceeds 1.5m (3.3ft) in 10 seconds.

Obviously it is a good idea to use the analog hands and bezel to time the dive in coordination with the LCD dive time display.

After the dive the dive log will display up to four dives including date, maximum depth, dive time, dive start time, dive end time, average depth, and minimum temperature.

My Experience

When the Duplex is working it is a great watch. I’ve never used it as my sole depth or timing device as I always have either an additional depth gauge and/or computer. Thankfully that is the case as the depth gauge on the watch has malfunctioned several times. I first noticed this after having had the watch for about a year when during a dive the depth gauge displayed varying depths from 0’ to 90’ when I was at about 40’ the whole time. I sent the watch back to Citizen and they changed the battery which I got charged a hefty fee as this was not a warranty repair. OK. After using the watch again for about a month the same issue again appeared and I returned the watch to Citizen with a ‘nastygram’ informing them I didn’t appreciate paying them for an issue they obviously didn’t address. The watch came back several weeks later with a note assuring me that it was now fixed. It wasn’t. The watch will now go into dive mode for no apparent reason and I can no longer adjust the hour on the digital time in the upper LCD display. After three tries at getting Citizen to correct the problem I have given up not only on getting this issue resolved but Citizen as a company. All I can say is that if you choose the Aqualand Duplex, good luck.

Price

The Duplex has an MSRP of $595.00 but is regularly advertised for less than $400. I paid $295.00 through an industry program.

Warranty

5 year limited.