Illustrative render of the Casio Duro MDV106 half-submerged at the edge of dark seawater

Casio · Duro · Ref MDV106-1AV

Sixty-five dollars.
Six hundred and sixty feet.

There is no trick to the Duro and no story to sell you. It is a real 200-metre dive watch with a screw-down crown, sold for less than most people spend on a strap. That is the whole pitch, and it has been enough for well over a decade.

200m

660 feet, ISO-style diver

44mm

92 grams on the resin strap

Screw-down

Crown and caseback both

3 years

Module 2784 quartz

The part that matters

A screw-down crown is not a marketing word.

Most watches at this price are rated 30m or 50m, which in practice means rain and handwashing. The Duro threads its crown into the case and screws the caseback down behind it, and that combination is what gets it to 200 metres rather than a splash rating.

In ordinary use the difference is simple. You do not think about it. Swim in it, shower in it, take it out on a boat and let it get soaked. The one habit worth keeping is checking the crown is screwed home before you get in the water, which takes a second and becomes automatic.

Illustrative render, close on the Casio Duro's bezel edge and screw-down crown with water beaded on the steel — The crown threads into the case. So does the back.

Illustrative render of the Casio Duro worn on a wet wrist gripping a boat rail, open ocean behind — 44mm wears smaller than it reads. 92 grams is most of the reason.

The bezel only turns one way, on purpose.

Line the triangle up with the minute hand and the bezel counts elapsed time for you. It is anti-reverse, meaning it will not rotate the other way if it catches on a sleeve. If it did, it could show you less time elapsed than actually had, which is the one direction a diver cannot afford to be wrong in.

You are almost certainly not diving. It is still the most useful complication on any watch at this money: parking meters, laundry, a pot on the stove, the twenty minutes you told yourself you would spend on something.

Module 2784

It is a quartz, and that is the point.

Enthusiasts will tell you a mechanical movement is the soul of a watch. They are not wrong, and it is also not what this watch is for. The Duro runs a battery quartz movement that keeps better time than a mechanical costing thirty times more, and asks nothing of you for roughly three years at a stretch.

Casio quotes accuracy of about twenty seconds a month for this case and movement, and a battery designation of SR626SW — both taken from Casio’s page for the MDV-106B, which shares the case. Casio has retired the product page for our exact reference, so we are citing the closest sheet Casio still publishes rather than inventing a number.

Practically: it will drift a few seconds between the times you happen to look at a clock, and then one day in year three it will stop, and a battery costs a few dollars.

Illustrative render, macro of the Casio Duro dial showing applied markers and the date window — Applied markers and a date at three, at sixty-five dollars.

Illustrative render, the Casio Duro laid on a nautical chart beside brass dividers and a coil of rope — An illustrative render. Yours arrives on a resin strap, in a Casio box.

Eight ways to buy the same watch.

The case, the movement and the 200m rating are the same across the family. What changes is the dial, the bezel insert and, on a couple of them, the bracelet. Pick on looks — there is no better or worse one here.

Black (MDV106-1AV)Blue dial (MDV-106B)Green bezel (MDV-106B)Black / blue accents (MDV-106B)Blue / red “Pepsi” (MDV-106B)Gold accents (MDV-106G)Green bezel on steel bracelet (MDV-106DD)Blue / red on steel bracelet (MDV-106DD)

What you are giving up.

Mineral glass, not sapphire. It will pick up scratches that a sapphire crystal would shrug off. A replacement crystal is cheap; so is living with it.
The lume is adequate, not good. It will read for a while after lights-out and then fade. Do not buy this expecting a dive watch that glows all night.
The stock strap is the weak point. It is perfectly serviceable resin, and it is also the first thing most owners replace. Budget twenty dollars if you want it on NATO or rubber.
No sweeping seconds. Quartz ticks. If that bothers you, you want a mechanical, and you want to spend more.

Illustrative render of the Casio Duro resting on wet slate

The easiest watch recommendation there is.

If someone asks what watch to buy and gives you no other information, this is the answer. It is hard to outgrow, impossible to be precious about, and cheap enough that ruining it would be a story rather than a loss.

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