Nodus Sector Deep Review

First off, the same feeling of value I got from the Retrospect III. Everything feels intentional, thought through. Details were not missed. “Fit and finish” is an overused turn of phrase, but boy howdy, it feels appropriate here.

Size is fantastic. The 42mm bezel overhangs the 38mm case and is therefore easy to grab and adjust, the grippy coin edge helps with that. Great knurling on the crown, though the crown can be a little difficult to grip tucked under the bezel, so the knurling helps. I’d say the crown takes quite a while to screw in or out, understandable given the 500m depth rating. If you’re at 500m depth you’ve got bigger problems than the crown. Like bodily implosion caused by pressure 50x that at the surface. The destro crown is hard to get used to for me when winding, but as someone who wears their watches “too low” according to some jackass on reddit, I do like not needing to worry about the crown digging into my meaty, meaty meathooks.

Speaking of marketing-driven depth ratings, at 13.6 mm, the watch is remarkably thin for a 500m depth rating. Probably the competition can be that thin, but you don’t look like a 1990s action move star then, right?

The crystal is quite thick, I believe I read 2.5mm somewhere. The minutes chapter ring is actually on the inside of the bezel behind the crystal. This is a cool idea but affects visibility of the minute ticks indoors and in low light, and the ticks are un-lumed. Not only do you have to slightly angle the watch to see them, but the crystal reduces the contrast — not out in the daylight, but indoors (or i’d imagine underwater where minutes count). The crystal has a good amount of AR coating that I believe is only on the inside surface, giving the crystal an attractive blue color in the sun; in fact I found it momentarily disorienting because I was wearing a red shirt but it looked almost like it was reflecting a blue shirt in the dial. This is a really nice color detail and little surprises are fun to me.

The 120-click unidirectional bezel is marked for a countdown timer and a 12-hour scale. I like dual-functionality bezels and I think this is going to be found more often, I feel under the influence of Serica’s excellent implementation. Drayson’s Ubiq kickstarter has a great implementation as well. I would have felt a countdown/count-up would have made more sense on this watch, but let’s be honest, I won’t personally be diving any time soon so it’s an aspirational ask, at best.

The dial is fantastic. I love the big chonky (as “the kids” say) matte white indices that are highly visible against the matte black dial. (I also think 2024 will see more matte dials, that seems to be multiplying as well, and I appreciate it.) these indices are visible at any angle and at a distance. The indices match the visibility of the really unique handset that I don’t even know what to call as far as shape. The minutes hand is a broad arrow basically, but the hours hand looks to me like the view of a boat and its keel seen from below. I’m sure that’s a flight of fancy but there is a raised ridge down the middle of the hours hand. All of those have highly reactive and long-lasting lume. I shone a small uv flashlight on the dial for a few seconds, and the line was bright and lasted for minutes. Impressive, especially at $600. I do find the rectangular-lollipop (i always call these “sugar daddy” lollipops after the caramel suckers named that) to be rather boring compared to the rest of the dial and handset, I’d personally prefer a counterbalance to the lollipop for example. A quibble, however.

The case has the same attention to detail and fit and finish of my Nodus Retrospect. Except that in this case, the inside edges and bottom edge of the lugs are far too sharp. The solid female endlinks of the bracelet are even inset below the tops of the lugs, not matching the lug height to make a continuous surface, so there’s no reason for this, a gentle milling would round off the edges and solve this problem. This is my main complaint about the otherwise astonishingly-good watch.


The movement is an NH35 regulated to -10/+10 at the factory. I haven’t bothered to check the accuracy but my Retrospect III is easily within +5.

The microbrand market seems to be settling in to a $300 tier and a $600 tier, but at $600 this feels like committing armed robbery. It’s a tremendous value of a watch. There are now two Nodus watches on my “never sell” list.