Casio AE-1700 with a diving-style rotating bezel and large digital display is intriguing but confusing

The all-new Casio AE-1700 series includes the AE-1700H-1AV, AE-1700H-1BV with inverted display, and AE-1700H-1A2V with “Pepsi” bezel. These models feature 100-meter water resistance, approximate 10-year battery life, and a rotating bezel that we’re not sure is useful or not.

The Casio AE-1700 series (not announced in the U.S. yet) is similar to the popular AE-1500 in size and style with one obvious difference: a diving-style rotating bezel. The AE-1700 measures 54.9 × 47.3 × 14.3 mm and weighs 60 grams, compared to the AE-1500 at 54.4 x 51.2 x 15.7 millimeters and 57 grams. Both of these series feature 100-meter water resistance and an approximate 10-year battery life with a CR2032 battery. Both have dual time, a 1/100-second stopwatch, and 24-hour countdown timer with auto-repeat

The AE-1700 has 3 multi-function alarms with 1 snooze, while the AE-1500 has 5 multi-function alarms with 1 snooze. Advantages of the AE-1700 include a longer option for the LED backlight duration (1.5 or 3 seconds), button tone on/off, and summer time (DST) setting. Also, the AE-1700 displays the current time in timer and dual time modes, unlike the AE-1500. The “Fishing mode” listed on Casio’s AE-1700 product pages appears to be a mistake.

Here’s where we would normally explain how the rotating bezel (or “Timer Bezel”) works, but that’s where it gets confusing. On an analog diving watch, the 0 marker of the rotating bezel is used to mark the current minute hand position, so that the elapsed time can be viewed according to the 0-60 markings on the bezel. However, according to Casio’s product images, the circular LCD indicator surrounding the AE-1700’s main display shows the current seconds and not minutes. We’re thinking and hoping that maybe briefly pressing the A button in timekeeping mode changes the indicator to reflect minutes instead of seconds, but there is no mention of such an option in the instruction manual. It appears that the stopwatch and timer modes may also use the circular indicator (or may not), but even if it reflects the minutes and not seconds in stopwatch mode (which we don’t think is the case), that would defeat the purpose of having a rotary bezel which is supposed to be convenient and should be quickly settable during timekeeping mode. (Also, the current time is not displayed in stopwatch mode.) If the indicator cannot be changed to correspond to minutes in timekeeping mode, we would view that as a total fail and it seems so unlikely to be the final outcome, but there is no full confirmation either way yet. (I’ll be looking for the AE-1700 during a trip soon.) [Update: I couldn’t find it and still can’t find any hands-on YouTube videos about it.]

Images of the similarly styled Seiko “Digital Tuna” (SBEP) watches show that the circular indicator corresponds to the minutes, so using the rotating bezel is self-explanatory in that case. If we saw the same on the AE-1700 or were informed that it is an option, we wouldn’t be having an existential crisis over it.

Update: The ring indicator denotes the minutes in timer mode, and the current time is displayed in timer mode. In timer mode, unlike when the seconds are indicated with a dark section filling in for each second elapsed in timekeeping mode, the dark sections denote the total minutes of the set timer, and each dark section goes blank after each minute elapses. So the rotating bezel can be used to show how many minutes are remaining until the end of the countdown timer, but the digital display also does that! It can also be used to measure the minutes from a certain point during the timer, but why? The rotary bezel still seems rather pointless if the ring indicator can’t denote the minutes in timekeeping mode.

View Casio AE-1700 at casio.com/intl (Asia Region)