Water Resistant Mark

Water Resistant Mark

Water Resistant is a common mark stamped on the back of wrist watches to indicate how well a watch is sealed against the ingress of water. It is usually accompanied by an indication of the static test pressure that a sample of newly manufactured watches were exposed to in a leakage test. The test pressure can be indicated either directly in units of pressure such as bar (which is neither an SI nor an cgs unit, but is accepted for use and used by the International Organization for Standardization), atmospheres, or (more commonly) as an equivalent water depth in metres (in the United States sometimes also in feet).

An indication of the test pressure in terms of water depth does not mean a water resistant watch was designed for repeated long-term use in such water depths. For example, a watch marked 30 metres water resistant cannot be expected to withstand activity for longer time periods in a swimming pool, let alone continue to function at 30 metres under water. This is because the test is conducted only once using static pressure on a sample of newly-manufactured watches. The test for qualifying a diving watch for repeated usage in a given depth includes safety margins to take factors into account like ageing of the seals, the properties of water and seawater, rapidly changing water pressure and temperature, as well as dynamic mechanical stresses encountered by a watch. Also every diving watch has to be tested for water resistance or water-tightness and resistance at a water overpressure as it is officially defined.