Garmin Swim 2 GPS Swimming Smartwatch for Pool & Open Water - Tracks Distance, Pace, Stroke Count & Type - Slate Gray | Speedo Men's Endurance+ Solid Swimsuit Jammer - Perfect for Competitive Swimming, Lap Training & Triathlons

Watch is great for open water swimming, walking and biking outside. The only negative is the short battery life. Have to charge twice a week, at least. Previously owned Garmins had battery life of a couple of weeks when used daily for workouts. Open water, it is spot on for accuracy.The watch was a little difficult for me to program but I'm not a Garmin techie but then I'm a boomer. I finally got the hang of it and it works great. I only use it for lap swimming so far.I primarily used GPS watches for marathon open water swim training. Training swims for this are often many hours long, and the Garmin Swim 2 doesn't have the battery life to support that training. After disabling all the watch features except for GPS tracking, I was able get about 6 hours of battery life out of the watch. Without disabling features, I was lucky to get 3 hours out of the battery. Battery life for land based activities was fine, but for a watch with "swim" in the name, I expected better in water performance.All of that said, I recognize my usage is more the exception than the rule. So if your swims are "short" (by my standards), or if most of your swimming is in a pool (not using GPS) this is a great watch. The device features and tracking are quite good. Because the only problem I had with the watch was battery life, I returned the watch and replaced it with a Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar which is supposed to have a better battery life. In theory, I should get the same kind of performance and features that the Swim 2 offered, and a more usable battery life for my purposes.Update: It still works, but I think it's just okay now. It's definitely a much more useful tool in the pool than the open water. The best thing I can say for open water swimming is that it's good at letting you know if your stroke rate is faltering, which is important in colder waters. After that, it really feels like a crapshoot on accurately measuring your GPS location, distance, and pace. Maybe it's just me but I think the GPS tracking seemed to be a bit worse lately than when I first got it.I'm pretty sure I'm going to bite the bullet this year and replace this watch with the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar. I'll probably also drop the extra $50 for the Surf edition. While I don't expect the GPS, distance, and pace to really improve from the Swim 2, I will appreciate the additional useful features like surf/tide data (Surf edition), compass, and the ability to now use the IQ store.I like this watch. It can be suited for open water swimming at a reasonable price compared to other GPS smartwatches, but I think it's missing a crucial feature that I will explain later.The stroke rate seems to be above average. It seems suited to detect front crawl, but it looks like it can tell when to stop while I'm floating/treading water. However, it doesn't seem to like it when I transition to breaststroke as SPM may inaccurately spike up at times. Remember that Garmin's stroke rate doesn't calculate your other arm, so whatever it is you see on the screen you'll need to multiply by 2 to get the real number.Now for GPS. I'm no expert in GPS accuracy so take my word with a huge grain with salt. It seems good enough. Distance is already a poor indicator in open water because not only you're trying to swim straight without those black lines swimming pools have, you're also likely dealing with currents that push/pull you off the mark. The lake I swim in typically has an eastern current, and the GPS seems to pick that up pretty well along my course correction efforts to calculate an approximate distance within acceptable levels. Expert reviewers like DC Rainmaker can provide better data on GPS accuracy.So I think it's missing one crucial feature: a compass widget. Call me strange or picky, but most people who live on the coast can attest to cloudy/hazy mornings almost every day. If you're a morning swimmer (and you want to be if you wish to beat the crowds) and you want to wait for clear skies, you might as well never swim at all. The other thing is that sea fog can form and envelop a beach at an alarmingly quick rate.So in the inevitable case I find myself in fog, my visibility and hearing will be limited which is a dangerous situation. If I'm lucky enough I can check the sun's position and direct myself from there, but I would feel much, much safer if I had a compass to verify I'm correctly going back to shore.While the 1st gen Garmin Instinct without solar does have compass capabilities along with a suite of other outdoor tools, it does not have underwater HR or upgraded GPS chip as the Garmin Swim 2. The 2nd gen Garmin Instinct with solar does have them, but now you are ponying up $400 instead of $250. So at this point I'm relegated to either buying a separate compass that I can store in my tow float or an attachment I can clip onto the watch strap. Those are perfectly viable alternatives, but nevertheless annoying knowing that Garmin is capable of implementing these features in the Swim 2.All-in-all, this is a likeable smartwatch for the guy that only likes to swim.easy to use . keeps track of things i never knew i neededUpdate 16June2022: I just want to give a shout out for Garmin phone support. I was having trouble getting GPS to find satellites this summer, and it was losing track mid swim. Mary Beth at Gamin support walked me through several paths to finally get the find time down to under a minute. She was patient and seemed genuinely interested in solving my problem -- a rare event from support lines these days. I'm still loving my Swim 2 after nearly a year.------- original review --------------My earlier Garmin Forerunner 310XT wrist GPS takes forever to achieve satellite lock, and it showed me zipping back and forth while I was open-water swimming, so I needed something new. It's all in the software, because a watch on your wrist will lose a satellite or two while it's under water, and the software needs to adjust for this and not think you have zoomed at high speed to the point where it regains satellite lock. Garmin has been working on this issue for some years, (as have others) and I'm very pleased with the results.I also borrowed an Apple watch for a few open-water swims. Tracking was excellent, but it has a feature that locks out any screen actions while swimming, making it somewhat difficult to control. Also, the Garmin is really built for swimming, so it has many more swimming metrics besides speed that make tracking your progress easier. The other advantage is that the Swim 2 software interface is very smooth on a PC, whereas you have to interact with an Apple watch with an iPad, Mac, etc. (There may be options for the interface that I'm not aware of.)The real killer for my use of the Apple watch was that it was less reliable reading my pulse while swimming. Both Apple and Garmin use optical pulse measurement, which is a bit dicey in the water (both say to adjust the band tight but comfortable), but often I would finish a swim to find that the Apple watch had not recorded my pulse at all. The Garmin may make some mistakes occasionally, but it keeps doing the best it can.Controlling the Garmin is not as intuitive as the Apple watch, but once I got used to it I didn't start activities unintentionally or make similar mistakes too often.On balance, the Garmin Swim 2 is a keeper and has replaced my Timex Triathlon as my main watch. The alarm, timer, and stopwatch features are more flexible than the old Timex and get a lot of use.The watch works well and the Garmin tracker in the running mode works well, but I purchased the watch to use whilst swimming. It gives out the time swimming but as for showing the route you have taken, forget it.I am more than disappointed with it and that after paying £350.00 for it as that was the price at the time. If you are an open water swimmer and want to share your route with other swimmers do not bother with buying this watch. On contacting Garmin they said that the watch will not give a true reading if it is submerged, they recommended strapping it to hair or a swim cap. For heavens sake its a swim watch, of course it will end up submerged for a lot of the time.O relógio é simplesmente incrível. O desempenho dele na piscina é fantástico (em comparação com outros relógios smartwatch que já usei). Embora tendo foco em natação (em piscina e em águas abertas), ele é ótimo para quem gosta de corrida. Outra informação importante é que ele é muito bom para monitorar o sono e mostrar notificações em geral (como mensagens de WhatsApp, e-mail etc.). Ele pode muito bem ser usado como o seu único smartwatch (para treino, monitoramento de sono, recebimento de notificações etc.). O meu resumo, após cerca de 15 dias de uso, é: o Garmin Swim 2 é um smartwatch de altíssimo nível, focado em natação (mas que serve não só para nadar).O produto atende bem em geral. No modo pool o relógio só registra os exercícios com movimento da mão; então os exercícios educativos de movimento de pernas apenas sem o movimento da mão não são contados na metragem total nadada, aparecendo então como período de descanso.Comprei para nadar no mar, porém ao fazer um circuito em boias (em diferentes configurações, e.g. quadrado de 75m etc) a precisão do relógio deixa a desejar e marca abaixo do realmente nadado. Mas em nados mais longos a precisão fica muito maior. Para natação em piscina ele é excelente, pois reconhece muito bem o tamanho da piscina e permite a prévia elaboração e configuração do treino. As métricas e gráficos disponibilizadas no app são muito completos e de fácil interpretação, sobretudo para natação em piscina. É o relógio mais completo e próximo do ideal para quem pratica natação como esporte principal. Recomendo a compra, apesar do preço bastante alto para tal produto.El reloj utiliza el numero de brazadas y la distancia de la alberca para determinar el numero de vueltas. Por lo tanto cuando se utiliza la tabla para solo practicar patada(crawl, dorso, pecho o mariposa) el reloj no registra los metros recorridos. Consideren eso al momento de ver los resultados finales de la sesion.