Swim watch...

[JohnF]

I've been using the Garmin Swim watch for over 2 years now and just recently changed the battery for the first time. I use it to keep track of laps during my frequent swims to keep track of how I am doing.

Anyone else use a Sunnto or one of the GPS Garmins for lap swimming? Or open-water swimming? It'd be nice to have some additional features so that for the days I do go swimming, I don't have to change watches for other purposes, as I find the look of the Garmin Swim watch to be...plain at best. :-)

[pepperami]

Some of the Casio Protreks look quite stylish? Or an old reliable (and very inexpensive) Timex Ironman?

[JohnF]

They don't count the strokes automatically or catch when you make a rolling turn at the end of a lap. The Garmin Swim does that, as do some of its more expensive brethren.

[thewalrus]

I use a Suunto Ambit 2 for swimming laps and open water swimming. Lap swimming is pretty accurate - though it always seems to be one lap short of what I've actually done, when it uploads my data to my MovesCount website. For instance, the watch will say I swam a kilometer of 50 meter lengths, but the data logged will show that I swam 950 meters.

The watch is hopeless when it comes to identifying stroke types though - according to Suunto I do 2 laps of a front crawl. 5 of a backstroke. 3 breaststroke. Another 10 in the front crawl... when in fact I'm just doing the same thing the entire time.

The Ambit 2 is pretty fantastic for cycling and running. Very accurate in all respects.


My wife has a Garmin Vivoactive. I don't know how the swimming functions work - but it does have them. It's more of a total smart watch, with all sorts of other cool functions.

[JohnF]

Hmmm... the Garmin swim does very well in counting strokes and while I've had the occasional dropped lap, it's been very good on that as well. Given the distance and frequency I swim, it's within a very small rounding error percentage of under 1%...and the type of swim is always accurate. But thanks for the input. :-)