WITHSTANDING WATER AND SWEAT
If you’re going to wear true wireless in-ears for running
or another exercise, some level of water resistance is
crucial. IP (International Protection) ratings are
becoming a more common inclusion on product spec
pages and on the outside of boxes for headphones, so
it’s important to understand what they actually mean.
Often, a product is listed as having a rating of, say,
IPX7. That X is a placeholder, not something that
stands for “extreme” or any other rugged superlatives.
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denotes the dust ingress rating on a scale of 0 to 6,
and the second number denotes water protection on a
scale of 0 to 8 (there are some higher degrees of IP
protection for liquids, but they are rarely seen on
consumer-level products).
So if a product is listed as IP56, it means that the dust
ingress protection is rated at 5, and the water ingress
protection is rated at 6. The X is a placeholder because,
often, companies will simply not thoroughly test for
dust ingress, but they know they’ve built a product
sturdy enough to provide some basic level of protection
from it. So rather than put a zero there, which would
look bad, the X means the product likely has a degree of
dust protection, but it wasn’t measured.
Furthermore, the numbers don’t necessarily correspond
to some obvious system—a higher number does mean a
higher level of protection, but each number is a new,
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means the product is protected from water projected
from a certain-sized nozzle. IPX7 means the product
can withstand being submerged up to a meter; this is
typically the highest IP rating you’ll see.
If you’re going
to wear true
wireless in-ears
for running or
another
exercise, some
level of water
resistance is
crucial.