Water Resistant Vs. Water Proof

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Ok, I’ve finally had enough with the confusion.  What in the hell is the difference between water resistant and water proof?  The latter of course seems better.  If it’s ‘proof‘, like ‘fool-proof’ or something, then seemingly nothing’s getting past it, including fools.  And ‘resistant‘, well it sounds good too, it resists, but you know, there’s no proof.  So what gives?

Currently I am wearing a pretty decent watch by my standards (one in photo).  In the $120 plus range and its face states that it is water resistant up to 100m.  Ok, the 100m sounds pretty solid.  It certainly seems to imply that if I were to go surfing with it on that it would hold up just fine, since I never do seem to get pounded anywhere close to 300 feet down, even on a big day.

But again, there’s that resistant word.  What is that?  Shouldn’t it say water proof to 100m?  Are the two the same, or does resistant mean that it will just do its best to hold back the water pressure up to 100m and then past that point it simply won’t try?

It’s confusing to say the least so…when all else fails, Google, right?

Right.  Well I Googled up the subject and came across an official site.  It started with this:

If asked is your watch water proof or water resistant you might get confused…

That’s right, I am. Sweet.

…Most of the watches are marked as water resistant up to a certain capacity and can also be said as water proof. So what is this comparison all about? This is to clarify the meaning of water resistant vs. water proof.

Perfect!  It goes on…

With the new ISO standards…

‘ISO standards’.  Gorgeous, this person seems to know what their talking about…

…The “Water Resistant” mark has come to replace the “Water Proof”. Now if your watch is water resistant it is water proof to a certain extent. Actually both the marks mean the same thing to some extent. A water resistant watch is equivalent to water proof to a certain extent. This can be summarized with some figures

• 30 Meters/100 Feet
• 50 Meters/160 Feet
• 100 Meters/300 Feet
• 150 Meters/500 Feet
• 200 Meters/660 Feet
• 1000 Meters/3300 Feet

Alright.  It’s pretty clear, I guess, though the overly repetitive “to a certain extent” seems a bit gray.  But, no bother.  The person does appear to be roughly equating the two (to ISO standards?  -See now I’m throwing it around.  Which really is nice cause some other dumbshit is going to Google ‘ISO standards’ and end up on this site.  Round and round we go.)

Anyways, my watch, as I stated before, is water resistant up to 100 Meters or 300 Feet, so basically its implying that my watch is water proof up to (to some extent?) that depth.  Ok, I’m cool with that.

But then it goes on to say this…

These however, do not generally indicate the point at which a watch’s resistance to pressure is expected to fail. For example, a watch rated 30 Meters would not be expected to survive Scuba Diving to 30 Meters, but would be expected to survive light splashing, for example wearing in the shower.

?????  What the fuck???  What happened to this equitable ‘proof’???  This “to some extent”, should be rewritten to “some very fucking small extent”, right?

And then this person is more or less adding that the meters depth doesn’t mean a damn thing.  (I.E. the 30 Meters watch would only be expected to survive a misting or some shit.)  So what the hell is 30 Meters even referring to?  How far one could  be expected to throw the piece of shit after the hands freeze at ten after two after stepping out of the shower?

I don’t know.  TW I vaguely remember you purchasing a diver’s watch years back that was twice the worth of my first car (God bless that bronze Toyota Corolla.  Remember that beauty?  How it courageously handled the off roads with my tape player wedged between the seats?).  Anyways, since you have experience with deep sea diving, hopefully you or someone else can clear this one up for me because the ‘official’ definition I just read is utterly ridiculous…to some extent.

BN