The term ‘water resistant’ might seem a little ambiguous to many people, and it’s only natural that if you’ve recently spent a significant amount of money on a luxury watch that claims to be water resistant that you won’t want to find our just how much water it can actually resist through trial and error.
Most watches that bear the water resistant mark claim to be water resistant to a depth of 30m, however, this is not to be taken literally as most watches with this mark are far from water resistant. They’ll be able to tolerate splashes of water or rain, but it would be extremely unwise to wear one swimming or submerge it in water for any length of time.
The water proofing on higher end luxury time pieces, such as Rotary Watches and models produced by other well respected brands, is likely to be of a much higher quality and watches that claim water resistance to a depth of 50m or more are usually perfectly suitable for swimming and other recreational water sports. However, it would be very unwise to dive with one of these watches and in fact only specified diver’s watches should be used in this way.
If you’re wandering just how water resistant your watch is then it’s best to remember that watches that claim to be water resistant to a depth of 30m should not be worn whilst swimming or ever submerged. High quality watches from prestigious brands with resistance to 30m will resist splashes of water very well and perhaps even a brief period of time underwater. For example, owners of Rotary or Omega watches with  resistance to 30m shouldn’t be worried about damaging their time piece should they be caught in a rainstorm, but it would be unwise to even attempt the washing up whilst wearing an allegedly water resistant watch from a lesser brand.