I have a birthday coming up and my wife asked me to think of a present. I was thinking of a swimming watch and would appreciate recommendations.
My main requirements are dependability and simplicity of operation.
I have a Garmin Swim. It's a solid watch, but I think the "swim features" are more "gee whiz" than actually useful.
The waterproof feature is great (but you can get that elsewhere)
Lap counting works very well, but I never have a hard time counting laps
The stroke counting feature doesn't work accurately for freestyle or backstroke, as it captures motion from only one hand, e.g., "5" on the stroke count could be 9, 10 or 11 actual single arm stokes depending upon which arm you start pulling with and which arm you end with. I recognize you'd need to have two "bands", one for each arm, to get accuracy, but, for me, knowing if I did 9 or 11 strokes are very different answers.
My humble opinion is that swim watch technology is still in "beta" mode in terms of adding any real value to a swimmer.
I have a Garmin Swim. It's a solid watch, but I think the "swim features" are more "gee whiz" than actually useful.
The waterproof feature is great (but you can get that elsewhere)
Lap counting works very well, but I never have a hard time counting laps
The stroke counting feature doesn't work accurately for freestyle or backstroke, as it captures motion from only one hand, e.g., "5" on the stroke count could be 9, 10 or 11 actual single arm stokes depending upon which arm you start pulling with and which arm you end with. I recognize you'd need to have two "bands", one for each arm, to get accuracy, but, for me, knowing if I did 9 or 11 strokes are very different answers.
My humble opinion is that swim watch technology is still in "beta" mode in terms of adding any real value to a swimmer.
