A guide to water resistance in watches
Not everything that shines is waterproof.
When it comes to misleading terms, water resistance in watches take at least one of the top ten spots along with modern news sites, infomercials and those daily snoops at your friend’s “perfect” life on Instagram.
To be fair, watch manufacturers have sometimes used this confusing terminology to trick consumers into thinking that the watch they’re buying is “waterproof”. But eventually, their supposedly “30M Water Resistant” watch after a slightly heavy storm ends up deader than my dog when he decided he had had enough of my bullshit and launched himself off of my car at high speed (true story, sadly).
First of all, what is water resistance when it comes to watches? Simple. The term refers to how much PRESSURE a watch can withstand. That’s all it is. What is important when it comes to taking water resistance into consideration is not the depth at which you submerge your watch but the pressure it will be able to withstand before it starts leaking.
Although manufacturers sometimes do take their pieces underwater to such depths for testing, most of the time watches are submitted to static tests equivalent to the water pressure (measured in atmospheres or BAR’s) expected to be found at the standard measured.
