Citizen’s new titanium Promaster Air automatics launch in the UK, priced lower than the US

Citizen has added the Promaster Air Automatic to its UK site in two dial colours, the blue NK0040-58L and the champagne NK0040-58P, at £599 each. This is the third market the pair has turned up in and Britain is easily the cheapest. UK prices include 20 percent VAT, so £599 cuts back to about £499, or roughly $666. Citizen charges a whopping $895 for the blue model in the United States before sales tax and CA$1,195 in Canada, which converts to around $840. The same watch therefore costs about $229 less in Britain than in America. That's a gap of roughly a quarter of the total amount.

Both references have the same 40 mm case in Super Titanium, Citizen’s surface-hardened titanium, and run on an automatic movement with 60 hours of reserve, hacking seconds and a date. Citizen lists that movement as Caliber 8310 in North America and 8314 in Europe, with identical published figures of course. The crystal is sapphire with anti-reflective treatment and water resistance is 200 meters. The outer bezel is a rotating slide rule of the sort pilots once used for fuel and distance calculations. The bracelet is Super Titanium with a fold-over clasp and a hidden push button.

As expected, the two differ only in dial. The NK0040-58L flaunts a blue sunray finish and the NK0040-58P a champagne one. They both have applied luminous markers and oversized numerals at 12 and 6.

Citizen UK explicitly labels both as new arrivals. The blue model reached the United States at the end of September and the champagne version appeared on Citizen Canada a day later, so the watches themselves are a few weeks old. However, the price is new. For anyone shopping across borders, it is the lowest on offer so far as well.