Testing the IPX7 SweatGuard technology for the Soundcore Spirit X Sports Earphones by Anker
SweatGuard Immersion Test
1: Create Fake Sweat
Sweat is mostly water. A microfluidic model of the eccrine sweat gland provides details on what solutes partition into sweat, their mechanisms of partitioning, and their fluidic transport to the skin surface.Dissolved in the water are trace amounts of minerals, lactic acid, and urea. Although the mineral content varies, some measured concentrations are: sodium (0.9 gram/liter), potassium (0.2 g/l), calcium (0.015 g/l), and magnesium (0.0013 g/l
Many other trace elements are also excreted in sweat, again an indication of their concentration is (although measurements can vary fifteenfold) zinc (0.4 milligrams/liter), copper (0.3–0.8 mg/l), iron (1 mg/l), chromium (0.1 mg/l), nickel (0.05 mg/l), and lead (0.05 mg/l)
Minerals: see amounts listed above
Lactic Acid: TBD
Urea: 22.2 mmol/L
Uric Acid: 24.5 micromol/L
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration
ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12817713
2: Submerge headphones in Fake Sweat for various periods of time until they fail.
4hrs
6hrs
8hrs
10hrs
12hrs
14hrs
3: Test to see if they still play music, if the sound quality is degraded or not. After each interval they will be removed from the fake sweat, they will be dried off, charged fully and placed in front of a microphone at the same location and at the same volume with same song and recorded with software such as Audacity. A recording of what they sounded like out of the box will be the benchmark. This will allow us to more easily check performance and visually be able to look at the waveform for visually detecting differences.
4: There will be a visual inspection of device to see if there is any degradation to the plastic, rubber or metal parts. There might be some corrosive properties in the fake sweat that can make the actual casing of the headphones fail.
5: Once this core testing is done then a personal review will be completed. The personal review will entail an HD camera recording at 1080p with a closeup and focused look at the headphones, all audio will be recorded through dynamic microphones through a mixing board. The review will go over things such as appearance, functionality, sound quality, comfort and durability.
6: Just because Anker mentioned it, I will run it through the washing machine on the Heavy Duty Cycle and see what happens.
All testing will be video taped for reviewing and posted on Youtube.com