IP ratings
The IP rating is a crucial piece of information for any outdoor device
YOU WILL LEARN What IP ratings mean, and how they can help you to protect your digital devices
JARGON BUSTER The second digit in an IP rating refers to protection against water — but it doesn’t cover other liquids, such as acids, which can corrode many electrical components. Humidity and salt can be a problem too — salty sea air can be a real killer for all sorts of digital devices. That’s where the MIL–STD standard comes in (see Tough tech to the right).
Image rights: Apple Inc.
EVERY NEW TECHNOLOGY has its own assortment of jargon and technical terms that we all have to try to learn and understand. Computers have CPUs and GPUs, headphones have “decibels” and “frequency response,” and Wi-Fi routers have truly mind–boggling jargon like “orthogonal frequency division multiple access” — which is kind of the Wi–Fi equivalent of “everything, everywhere, all at once.”