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Garmin Swim Watch Review: Best Fitness Watch for Swimming?

The Garmin Swim activity smartwatch is specially dedicated for all those who want to keep an exhaustive record of their swimming sessions. Garmin has designed it specifically for that, and not for anything else, and the truth is that it has done really well. Let’s see how it behaves and what its main characteristics are in this Garmin Swim watch review.

Garmin Swim Watch Review

Garmin Swim - The Best Activity Tracker for Swimming - Opinion

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Garmin Swim Features

  • Sports watch for swimmers
  • 2.7 ″ screen with 55 x 31px resolution
  • Dimensions: 4.8 × 1.3cm (height x width)
  • Made of plastic
  • Battery: button cell (CR2032) – Lasts 1 year
  • Record distance, pace, and type and number of strokes
  • Wireless upload to Garmin Connect to analyze, store and share data online
  • Measure your effectiveness in swimming
  • Offers advanced features for timed sets and exercise log
  • Water resistant up to 50 meters
  • Designed to train in pools of a minimum of 17 meters.

Garmin Swim: Display, Build, and Battery

Well, this is not the most stylish sports watch in the world, but it is really functional. It is made of plastic and is quite comfortable to wear. When you are swimming practically you do not notice that you are wearing it.

The 2.7″ screen is non-touch, but large enough to be seen perfectly and smoothly. When you’re not swimming, it shows the time in numbers large enough to be read at a glance. Below the hour, this best smartwatch for swimming pool shows us the distance we have swum this week, something that really motivates us to achieve our goals. By default, the screen turns off if the watch has not moved in a minute. To activate it, just move your wrist. This simple idea helps us preserve battery life, a CR2032 button cell that can last up to 1 full year.

We can customize the screen to show us only the statistics that interest us. It also has an alarm and stopwatch and the screen colors and numbers can be inverted so that the screen can be seen in the dark.

Garmin Swim: What Can Be Tracked?

To start recording your activity when you swim, you have to press the blue button with the swim icon (it is hard, but it will not be pressed accidentally).

The Garmin Swim produces a shrill beep to let you know that it is recording your swim session. It keeps track of all kinds of statistics such as total time, total swimming time, distance traveled, number of lengths, time per 1100m, strokes per distance, swolf (add the strokes we have done to travel a distance plus time we have used to complete it), strokes per minute and calories burned.

And best of all, the measurements are really accurate and precise. It can be used in pools over 17 meters (we have to tell you what the length of the pool is).

You can stop the timer whenever you want and then press the same button to continue the session, which is very practical for interval training. This best smartwatch for swimming even detects the type of stroke you are using, which is very useful.

It is a pity that it does not include, for example, a pedometer, to record our daily steps, and give us a complete view of the exercise we are doing throughout the day.

Garmin Swim: App

The Garmin Swim records the activity of 30 swimming sessions, and from that moment it begins to erase the oldest sessions, so this best waterproof smartwatch for swimming is essential to synchronize the data with the Garmin application.

We simply have to install the Garmin software on the computer, plug in the “Ant USB” and your training data will be automatically transferred to the computer when you are in its range (you must first pair both devices). Synchronization only takes about 30 seconds

garmin connect

Then we can sign up for a Garmin Connect account and we can see all our data through the web.

The information that Garmin Connect offers us is tremendous, showing us all kinds of graphs. There is a lot of data, maybe too much: activities, calendar, calories, connections, devices, equipment, etc.

We can see our data in all kinds of graphs – by week, month, six months, and years, and we can see the average pace, total calories burned, average swolf, etc. It’s an impressive amount of data, but it may not be very useful for everyone. It should be possible to customize what we want to see and what we don’t.

We also have the Garmin Connect application for Android and iOS and it is much clearer than the web version. As the Garmin Swim does not have bluetooth, you cannot connect it directly to the mobile: you have to upload your data to the computer and then they appear in the app on your smartphone.

Conclusion

Possibly the only swimming activity monitor worth buying. The records that it is able to obtain from your swimming sessions are really accurate, it records an incredible amount of data and it is easy to use. By cons, style is not his strong suit, and he does not record other types of sports or activities. The desktop application can be a bit confusing. Despite these minor flaws, the Garmin Swim is the only device a serious swimmer should consider buying.

Pros
  • Take very precise measurements (swimming)
  • offers a lot of data and records
  • Easy to use
  • It is not excessively expensive
Cons
  • Design is not the best of the watch
  • It is not used for other activities
  • The desktop app is somewhat confusing

Hope this Garmin Swim watch review will clear all your doubt about the smartwatch and finally you will be able to make a decision.

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