The Apple Watch has been put through a variety of waterproofing tests since its public launch in April, but over the weekend endurance sports and tech blogger Ray Maker posted a few Apple Watch-related waterproof videos, including the first lap swimming test with Apple's new wearable.
As Maker notes in his blog post, many people have uploaded videos detailing simple waterproof tests in smaller backyard pools, but there has until now been little information on the Watch's ability to withstand higher-intensity swimming activities. As he notes, "It’s the wrist hitting the water that’s so difficult for watch waterproofing due to the impact forces," so that's what he decides to focus on in the test. After about 25 minutes in the water and a 1200 meter swim, Maker found results similar to most other waterproofing tests over the past few weeks - the Apple Watch remains seemingly unharmed by even the most daunting submerged water tests.
Afterwards, he aims to increase the water impact experimentation on the wearable by diving off of his local public pool's high diving platform. As Maker mentions, it's another item on the list of warnings given by Apple to avoid subjecting the Watch -- "Dropping Apple Watch or subjecting it to other impacts" -- but even after two jumps off the 5 meter platform and one off the 10 meter, the Apple Watch continued to perform normally for the tech blogger.
Maker's final test lies outside of a swimming pool in a makeshift waterproof test chamber, designed to simulate varying meters of pressure below the surface of the water. The Apple Watch, which is rated for only 1 meter of depth for waterproofing, was simulated with two separate dives of 40 meters during Maker's test. The results, unsurprisingly, fell in line with his previous findings for the Watch, with all of its various features appearing to function as expected following the stress test.
I’m impressed, it’s still chugging along after that – with not a single sign of any issues at all. Clearly this is all more than adequate for any sort of casual sweat or showering. Though I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out over the next few weeks just in case.
Of course, the slightly awkward thing is that despite this battery of tests, the unit still isn’t warrantied for any of this, including even a simple shower with soap. Now whether or not an Apple Store employee would question a watch that arrives back dead probably remains to be seen. On the flip side, it’s also clear that it’s probably quite a bit harder to kill the thing than Apple would have you believe.
As with any new product category, the Apple Watch has faced a deluge of various testing in videos and on blogs around the web ever since it launched to customers on April 24. Ray Maker's experiments provide the first real glimpse at the usability of the Watch in a high-intensity swimming environment, and definitely provides more ease-of-mind to those worrying about getting their watch even slightly wet. Still, Maker reiterates that given that the Watch "doesn’t take advantage of its internal accelerometers for any swimming metrics," he advises to leave it behind when swimming in a pool.
Top Rated Comments
You might as well just realize aftet your 10th swim that it just doesn't work anymore.
I suspect that Apple made the Watch as water resistant as they could, sufficiently so to protect against light or accidental immersions over the product's lifespan. They could not make it water resistant enough to encourage people to swim with them regularly, and thereby expose themselves to the cost of replacing these en masse after they fail.
----------
The Apple Watch is just a watch in the same way an iPhone is just a phone.
This, it's a very good tactic. If Apple claimed it was even 99% waterproof, you'd have loads of videos of people pressure-blasting the damn thing until it died. "Watergate", they'd smirk.
Whereas saying it's OK for light running water but nothing beyond that - and yet it works to these sort of depths - ensures that there's never going to be an out-of-warranty claim/liquid damage if people use it lightly.