Apple Watch Series 7: How does it stand up to water and dust?

Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, apple showed off the apple watch series seven in a very pretty video shot in various locations around California. In addition to new bike ride tracking and fall detection features, they also pointed out that the series seven is the most durable apple watch we've ever built. No surprise there, but let's listen to some of the specs. Speaker 2: It has our crack resistant front crystal, thanks to a stronger and more robust geometry. It's also the first apple watch to have IP six X certification. [00:00:30] So you don't have to worry about wearing it in dusty environments. And of course it's still swim proof with w R 50 water resistance. Speaker 1: That all sounds very impressive, but we just gonna take Apple's word for it. No, we're not in this video. I'll be conducting a couple of experiments on the apple watch series seven, to see if those claims stand up. What kind of experiments you ask? We'll hear a couple hints. Let's take a look at that video again. Speaker 2: It has our most crack resistant [00:01:00] front crystal, thanks to a stronger and more robust geometry Speaker 1: That one's a little big without any actual rating to back it up. So I'm gonna skip that one. Plus I've dropped a bunch of apple products before, so let's mix it up a little bit. Speaker 2: It's also the first apple watch to have IP six X certification Speaker 1: IP six X means no ING aggressive dot complete protection against contact dust tight. A vacuum must be applied. This one, I think I can handle, I can make a vacuum [00:01:30] in here. Speaker 2: And of course it's still swim proof with w R 50 water resistance. Speaker 1: This one's a little confusing. If you read the fine print on the apple website, it says all the current apple watches have quote, a water resistance rating of 50 meters under ISO standard, 2 2800 0 colon 20 10 50 meters. That's pretty deep. But then in the next sentence, this means that they may be used for shallow water activities like swimming in a pool or ocean. However, they should not be used for scuba diving, [00:02:00] water skiing, or other activities involving high fall velocity, water, or submersion below shallow depth. Well, which one is it? Let's find out I'm going to start with water. And if the watch survives this, then I'll move on to dust. Later on this container here is set up to simulate the pressure of 50 meters of water, or even more than that, actually I borrowed the design from someone named falling Titan over on the statement and watch YouTube channel. You can go there to see how they built it and the parts you need. If you wanna make your own for this [00:02:30] demonstration, I'm gonna submerge the apple watch series seven in some filtered water, apply some pressure with this motorized bike pump, and then let it sit for 30 minutes when it's done. We'll take it out and see if it's still working. Let's give it a shot. Speaker 1: [00:03:00] The internet tells me that at 50 meters underwater, the additional pressure of the water is just under five atmospheres or just over 70 PSI. So I'll set my pump to 71 PSI, Turn it on And hope this doesn't explode. [00:03:30] I don't wanna sit too close to this thing. So enjoy this little montage as time passes. I found that my chamber isn't 100% airtight. So I had to top off the pressure a couple times to keep it right around 71 PSI. I couldn't figure out a way to make the watches screens stay on while it's in the chamber. It does have an always on display, but it has to either be on your wrist or on the charger for that to work. At least as far as I could tell [00:04:00] it. Hope you enjoyed that last 30 minutes. It's about time to take the watch out of the chamber. Just a few more seconds. Okay. That's 30. Get this outta here. We'll go ahead and unhook the pump, Which released a lot of the pressure. Press this button here. Everything looks good so far. Let's [00:04:30] go ahead and unscrew this And take out the watch And look at that screen. Turned on. Screen's on. I can switch. Watch faces, touch screens, working fine. I'm a little surprised that when I put the watch in the water, [00:05:00] the water lock feature didn't turn itself on. If it had, it would prevent any touch input happening while it was underwater. And you can turn it off by turning the crown button Speaker 1: Though, it sounds like there's a little bit of water stuck in there. Siri, would you like to go for a swim? Speaker 3: Hmm. I don't have an answer for that. Is there something else I can help with? Speaker 1: So even though apple says not to take the series seven scuba diving, it seems to be doing [00:05:30] just fine. After being in my pressure chamber for 30 minutes at around 70 PSI, I'm gonna give the, watch a pass on this one. After that simulated deep sea bath, I'm gonna let the watch dry out overnight, but tomorrow it's gonna get dirty. Speaker 1: Okay. It's tomorrow. Now I have new clothes on. Here's a picture of a Wilco concert. I went to last night and the watch is all dried out. So it's time to break out this baby. Remember the apple watch series [00:06:00] seven has an IP six X rating, which means it's supposed to be dust type. Once again, I looked to the internet to find out how people test IP ratings and found videos like this one from megalab group, showing products placed in a chamber, applying a vacuum and then subjecting the product to dust. So I bought this vacuum, which is used primarily for resin molding and this handheld brake bleeder kit from the hardware store, besides the dust bunnies under my bed. The dustiest thing I have around my house is this baking flower. So I'll be using that for my test medium. So let's give it a shot. [00:06:30] I'm using this paper bowl to hold the watch in place inside the pot. So it doesn't bounce around. I couldn't find any instructions for how much dust or flower to use. So I'll just use enough to make sure the watch is covered. Now I'll put the Speaker 1: [00:07:00] Connect the hand pump Speaker 1: And get a good little grip workout. While I remove the air from the pump. Ideally, I'd be able to remove enough air to get this gauge up to the one atmosphere mark, which would cancel out the pressure of the air in the room, but that's a never gonna happen with this little thing. The best I could do is get up to around halfway. So that'll have to do, I also couldn't really find a length of time. I should keep the watch in here. So I'll just go with 30 minutes like we did with the water tank and I'll [00:07:30] give it a good shake every couple minutes to make sure the dust gets distributed around the watch. All right. Cue the montage music. Okay. Stop the music. It's in 30 minutes, it's [00:08:00] time to open up the pot. This valve right here will release the pressure and hopefully not cover everything with flour. Okay, good. Now I can lift the top off the pot. There's the watch inside there. Still turning on lift this outta here. Try not to get flour everywhere. I brushed this off. [00:08:30] We can see Those just working. I think I accidentally turned it off, but it is turning back on now. Speaker 4: Right Speaker 1: There it is. It's turning on. I think the dust is confusing. The touch screen a little bit. We know this doesn't mind getting wet, so we rinse it off in our water chamber. Speaker 1: [00:09:00] Okay. Looking around. I don't see any dust. The side buttons are all working fine. I don't see anything in the speaker grill from what I can see from here besides my wet fingers. Everything's looking good. Now, obviously the only way to truly know if any dust made it inside, the watch would be to open it up and take a look. But since everything is working properly, I [00:09:30] hate to wreck a perfectly good watch. So I'm not gonna do that today, but if you really wanna see inside the let me know, and maybe I'll crack it open another time. So what have we learned today? If nothing else, it looks like it's perfectly safe to use the apple watch series seven while you're in the kitchen baking or doing dishes, apple says it's fine to take to the beach and a little salt water in sand. Speaker 1: Aren't gonna hurt it though. You might get some scratches on the glass I'm guessing. And even though apple warns against taking the watch scuba diving, it would appear to that. It can handle those deaths just fine though. This is a good time to point out that these experiments were [00:10:00] in no way meant to be true scientific tests. I was just trying to simulate some conditions used for testing watches to see what happens. And under these conditions, the apple watch series seven performed very admirably though. Of course your mileage may vary. That's it for me today. Be sure and check out the links in the description for C net's full review of the apple watch series seven, plus buying information and links to some of the resources I use to put this video together. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you next time.