Rotary partnered with watch retailer WatchNation to establish the Super 7 Scuba range in 2020. This reference is the orange dial model on a steel bracelet.

Diameter: 42.6mm

Lug-to-lug: 47.5mm

Thickness: 13.8mm

Lug width is: 22mm

The watch has 300 meters of water resistance.

The face of this watch has a rich orange dial and applied indices filled with lume at every hour position except the 3 o’clock, where the day and date features are displayed. Towards the 12 o’clock position is the Rotary logo and Super 7 branding. Towards the 6 o’clock position is the SUBA label, water resistance, automatic movement notice, and flanking the 6 o’clock indice is the British Design designation. The hour and minute hands are sword-shaped whereas the seconds hand is a lollipop. The crystal is sapphire. The bezel insert is a ceramic diving timing bezel. The bezel features 120-clicks and is unidirectional. I find it easy to grip with little back-play but it is pretty stiff to turn.

In terms of lume, this is perhaps the best watch I’ve owned in terms of how easy it is to see even hours after charging up. Lume is throughout the bezel insert, indices, and the hands. The bezel pip and the minutes hand are lumed in blue whereas the rest is in green, a feature that drew me to purchasing this watch.

The case has both vertically-brushed and high-polished surfaces. The crown is screw-down and has an S7 embossed on it. The crown features four positions. In position zero the crown is screwed down and maximum water resistance is obtained. In position one the movement can be hand-wound. Position two allows the day to be set if turned clockwise. Note the disc has the day in two languages so the first click moves to Spanish and the next click moves to the following day in English. When the day/date automatically rolls over the day dial goes through two clicks so it will stay on the language you have chosen. Turning the crown counterclockwise changes the date. Position three is where the time is set. This watch does not hack.

The watch has a closed caseback. The bracelet is the oyster style with solid end links. Removable end-links are secured by pins. I prefer screws but I did not face any issues with adjusting the links. WatchNation refers to the clasp as a deployment Z clasp. It’s serviceable but definitely on the lower end of clasps I’ve had. My biggest gripe about the bracelet is the limited micro-adjust, with only three positions. Initially I had an extra link removed and the micro-adjust fully open. The watch was a bit tighter on my wrist than I wanted. So I added a link and fully closed the micro-adjust, and the watch is a bit looser than I would like. The bracelet does feature a diver’s extension for quick wetsuit adaptation.

This watch features the Miyota 8205 caliber movement. It runs at 3 Hertz and offers a 42-hour power reserve. This movement does rely on an indirect drive system for the seconds hand, which can result in the seconds-hand stuttering, hesitating, and stalling. This stuttering is normal behavior and is said to not impact timekeeping, but it would explain why hacking would be fairly pointless given the seconds hand can so easily fall out of sync. It happens on mine readily with rapid wrist flicks. This movement also features a unidirectional rotor. Those who have seen my Hamilton Khaki Pilot Pioneer Auto Chrono review with the H-31 movement know I really disliked the rotor wobble associated with that unidirectional rotor. I’d seen another review that said it wasn’t an issue with this watch. I can confirm that I do not feel the rotor wobble here; I’m assuming it is because the case is so thick but perhaps there is some other difference with the Miyota movement that also helps. In a relatively quiet room I can hear the rotor spinning freely in the non-wind direction but I don’t really feel it.

This movement is advertised with a pretty poor timekeeping range of -20 to +40 seconds per day. On my timegrapher I got an average gain of one second per day across six positions, with a range of -8 seconds/day to +9 seconds/day. 

My overall thoughts:

The positives:

• Easy-to-read dial

• Great lume

• Reasonably accurate

• Affordable

The negatives:

• Watch is pretty bulky/heavy

• Limited micro-adjust on the bracelet is frustrating

• Stutter-seconds is annoying

• Bezel is tougher to turn than I would like

I bought this watch from WatchNation off eBay, which seems the easiest way for U.S. buyers to obtain it, for roughly $282. So, a lot of my negatives really need to be factored against that low price-point. Overall, the watch is really robust, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it keeps time. My sense is this watch is moving into the space where the Seiko SKX was at one point, though I’ve never owned that watch before so my personal ability to compare is limited. When looking at orange-dial dive watches around this price that are still made, the Islander Automatic Dive Watch was the only one that I noticed and it may be worth one’s time to read about the differences between that and this Rotary to decide which might be more appealing (for example, the Islander movement allows hacking but offers 100 meters less water resistance). Regardless, my overall take on this watch is for a sub-$300 diver it packs a lot of punch.