Water
IPX and water
An IPX number is the outcome of a described test. Waterproof is a word somebody typed. Several listings quoted on this site use both kinds of language, occasionally in the same sentence, and separating them is the only useful thing this page does.
The standard behind it
The IP code is defined in the international standard IEC 60529. It carries two digits: the first for solid objects and dust, the second for water. The X in IPX is a placeholder standing in for the first digit where that side was not tested, so IPX7 is a statement about water and says nothing at all about dust.
Each water digit corresponds to a particular test rather than to a general quality. Under that standard the lower steps cover splashing, the middle steps cover jets of rising force, and the upper steps cover immersion, the deepest of them on conditions the maker supplies. They are separate tests, not marks out of ten.
Nothing here has been put through any of them. Where a digit appears on this site, it appears because a listing printed it.
Words, not digits
Waterproof, water resistant, showerproof, washable and fully sealed have no fixed definition behind them. Any one of them might describe an appliance that would pass a demanding test, or one that the person who typed the word would never hold under a tap.
Where a listing gives a word and no digit, this site gives the word and no digit. Converting showerproof into a grade would be inventing a test result, which is a poor habit generally and a worse one around electricity.
What no rating covers
A water rating describes an appliance as sold: sealed, closed, undamaged, with nothing plugged into it. It does not describe that appliance with a cable in the socket, and it does not describe one that has been dropped, opened, or run for two years with hair packed into the seam around the head.
It also says nothing about your water. Hot soapy water, shower spray carrying whatever else is in the shower, and a rinse under a cold tap are three different exposures, and a test conducted in clean water at a stated depth speaks to one of them.
Which listings carry one
The nose and ear trimmers hold most of the numbered claims quoted on this site: a run of those listings prints the same digit in nearly identical words. That agreement is worth noticing on its own, because listings that match word for word usually describe a shared factory rather than shared testing.
Everything else that touches water does it in prose. Showerproof, waterproof, water resistant, wet or dry. Those appear here as written, inside quotation, and are not made more precise than they arrived.
What a listing settles
Stated by the listing
- A digit, where the seller chose to print one.
- Wording such as showerproof or washable, reproduced as written.
- Whether the seller describes the appliance as usable in a shower.
Not stated anywhere
- Which test was run, by whom, and against which edition of the standard.
- Whether the rating still holds after a year of soap, hair and knocks.
- Anything whatever about the appliance while it is connected to mains power.
Where this goes wrong
Promoting a word to a grade
Showerproof gets remembered as an immersion rating, and the appliance ends up in a full basin.
Keep the seller’s word as the seller’s word, and treat a missing digit as missing.
Rinsing with the cable in
The one condition every water rating excludes is the condition the appliance is now in.
Unplug, rinse, dry, and charge afterwards in another room.
Assuming the seal lasts
A gasket that has been opened, packed with hair and dropped is not the gasket that was tested.
Read the rating as a claim about a new appliance, and expect less of it as it ages.
Cautions
- NoteWater wording is quoted from a listing as written. Waterproof, washable and showerproof are seller’s words with no fixed definition; an IPX number is the result of a defined test. Neither converts into the other, and neither has been checked here.
- StopCharging happens away from the sink and the shower, with dry hands, and never while the appliance is still wet. A water rating describes an appliance in use, not an appliance connected to mains power.
- StopA corded appliance is a mains-powered appliance. It does not go into the shower, into a filled basin, or under a running tap, whatever a listing says about rinsing anything else.
- NoteAn appliance running on a removable AA cell does not inherit a water rating from a neighbor on the same shelf. Each listing speaks for one appliance only.
Where to look next
- Wet and dry use
What the phrase on the front of the box actually promises about foam, gel and running water.
- Power and Refills
Where the mains side of this lives, including the supply that must never meet a wet appliance.
- Nose and Ear Trimmers
The group whose listings print the same water digit in nearly the same words.