The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I did and it is. Thanks for the Ref Mikey!

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Al

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"

Hi Guys!

Thanks for all your reactions.
I have also the Chronomat Evolution from 2008,
so i can wear my CE when i go to the beach!

But i think it's a little bit weird that a EMERGENCY (survival) watch
is water resistant by 30 M.

Thanks!

It would be nice if watch companies would adopt a standard that allows users a simple way of identifying how water resistant a watch is. 30 meters resistance = splash resistance? What about 50 meters? And then 100 meters that you can snorkle but not scuba dive. Seems absurd from the average persons perspective. And why do you need at least 200 meters resistance to dive at 65 feet? Breitling recommends 300 meters. And then there is the over done thousands of meters and on and on. It just seems to me that the question of "can I swim with this watch or not" should be more obvious to anyone who purchases a watch that isn't specifically a dive watch. Reason? it is better to leave the watch on than take it off at the beach. Loose one in the sand and you will understand why.

There are standards for 'water resistant' and 'diver's watch' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resistant_mark

Thats impossible since there are so many variables involved in water resistance. Different forces (jumping into a pool, paddling etc) and temperature, just to name a few. The only way to have any type of standard is to conduct the testing in a static environment like they do now. Its confusing, but its the only way to get the hard data that the end user must be able to interpret themselves. Plus, im sure the manufacturers dont mind since it makes their specs look a lot more impressive than they really are.

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-RJ

It's just a matter of the consumer educating themselves. It's just part of the language of watches. Although it's easier to interpret what's written on the dial literally, as far as your warranty is concerned, the depth rating is merely an indication of relative water resistance.

As RJX3 explains, there are too many factors to standardize a test that would result in more "meaningful" description of water resistance.

@ Initalien - I always found that funny too. They make a watch called the Emergency Mission which has a much higher depth rating(100m) to fill that niche.

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“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.” - Albert Einstein

Respectfully disagree regarding descriptive standards for water resistance. It could be made much simpler and easier to understand for non diving watches.
If you read the many posts that come up regarding this subject, it is clear that the average consumer does NOT understand water resistance ratings. What is the point of having to explain that you can't swim with a watch that has a depth rating of 100 feet? And yet people do swim with expensive watches with only 30 meter ratings, evident with posts on this topic. There can be a better way to rate them. Perhaps a coded rating that requires it be interpreted, such as WR-1 , WR-2, and so on. That way a user doesn't misinterpet a 30 meter rating as being a watch you can swim in.

I take your point, and I know you said this would be for non-diving watches only, but with the current coding the watch industry has tried to come up with a standard approach for all watches. This means that while I agree a WR-1, WR-2 rating has it's merits, it would still have to have a definition to go with each rating. And I think you would still have to put some kind of depth rating on each code.

For example what might WR-1 mean? Would it mean, "Water resistant to 100m provided you are sitting absolutely still so as not to raise the pressure on the watch". Or might it mean, "Water resistant to 100m provided you don't move your arm any more than 5m per second". I'm not being flippant here ; just illustrating that the pressure variances caused just by moving the watch through the water at different speeds makes it nigh on impossible to come up with a standard definition. Its the density of the water that causes the problem compared to air because when you try to move something through it the pressure increases dramatically.

I totally agree that the current 30m, 50m, 100m etc descriptions are very easy to misinterpret, but I don't see any other way of addressing it.

The only way round it for non-diving watches would be to say that all non-diving watches are not water resistant..... but that would be plainly untrue. In which case we're back to trying to create some kind of grading in terms of water resistance at various depths.

It's a tough one, and I don't think there's an easy solution.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

My understanding of why the depth ratings are used is because the true measure of resistance - atmospheres, is not understood by consumers. Most people have no idea whether a watch that is resistant to 3 ATM of water pressure will leak in the rain, under a running faucet, surface swimming, etc.

That's why they try to use a more meaningful equivalent - 30M in the case of 3 ATM, but accepting that it's still not perfect.