And now to the ProDiver’s pièce de résistance, the Rotation Safety System bezel. This mechanism is designed such that, in order to turn the bezel counter-clockwise, the black outer ring must be first gripped and lifted up, freeing the underlying ring to rotate. The idea is that there would be no chance of accidentally knocking the bezel out of position, once set, something that would risk altering the all-important bottom time tracking. In reality, in over a decade diving with close to one hundred different watches, I’ve never once knocked a bezel underwater. That’s not to say it can’t happen, but I’ve always found over-engineered bezels, whether internal rings, the Ploprof’s locking button, or Oris’s RSS, unnecessarily fussy and potentially another possible point for clogging or malfunction; I prefer a simple ratcheting bezel (bi- or uni-directional) every time. In practice, I found the RSS ring on the ProDiver difficult to grip and lift, even in warm, tropical water with bare hands, and sometimes it took a couple of tries to get the bezel to rotate before submerging.
In-Depth Diving With The Oris ProDiver GMT
