There seem to be two groups in the watch community- the people who regularly swim with 30m or even splash resistant watches and the people who never swim with anything with less than 100m water resistance. Who’s right?
There seem to be two groups in the watch community- the people who regularly swim with 30m or even splash resistant watches and the people who never swim with anything with less than 100m water resistance. Who’s right?
Just check what the user manual says because it will be different depending on each brand and what standards they follow. Generally speaking it’s something like this:
- 3 atm or 30 m: Suitable for everyday use. Splash/rain resistant.Not suitable for showering, bathing, swimming, snorkeling, water related work, fishing, and diving.
- 5 atm or 50 m: Suitable for everyday use, showering, bathing, shallow-water swimming, snorkeling, water related work, fishing. Splash/rain resistant. Not suitable for diving.
- 10 atm or 100 m: Suitable for recreational surfing, swimming, snorkeling, sailing and water sports.Not suitable for diving.
- 20 atm or 200 m: Suitable for professional marine activity, serious surface water sports and skin diving.Suitable for skin diving.
- Diver’s 100 m: Minimum ISO standard (ISO 6425) for scuba diving at depths not suitable for saturation diving. Diver’s 100 m and 150 m watches are generally old(er) watches.
- Diver’s 200 m or 300 m: Suitable for scuba diving at depths not suitable for saturation diving.Typical ratings for contemporary diver’s watches.
- Diver’s 300+ m for mixed-gas divingSuitable for saturation diving (helium enriched environment).Watches designed for mixed-gas diving will have the DIVER’S WATCH xxx M FOR MIXED-GAS DIVING additional marking to point this out.
So 100m WR can be very different if it follows ISO 6425 or not
Watch brands also want to be safe and usually put a lower rating on a watch, even if it can do more.