2015 Swim-Gift Giving

Here's an update after a week+ of usage: Sadly, not much has changed. Stroke detection is still hit or miss. I was curious if it was just me so I let my teammate (a far more accomplished swimmer than I) use the Moov for a 1000 IM he was planning to do. On each 50, I timed his split to check the accuracy of the Moov as well. Of the 20 50s, only 6 times were within a quarter second of the split I checked on my watch. Total time for the 1000 was 3 seconds slower that what I clocked. The error range per 50 was +/- 2.5s. It interpreted 5 butterfly lengths as freestyle and one backstroke length as breaststroke (seems like it should at least know when it is upside down). The +/- 2.5s per 50 error range makes the Moov Now practically useless for interval swimming. There's a pretty significant difference between a 50 on :38 and one on :40. On top of that, it frequently interprets short rest intervals as just very long turns. So, if I did 10x100 on 1:15 and came in at 1:12-1:13 for each, it would interpret it as one long 1000 yard swim with an extra long turn every 100 yards. There are other minor annoyances as well. For one thing, it averages your strokes per length and strokes per cycle for the whole workout. That's fine for one long freestyle swim but not very helpful when you are mixing strokes up and swimming at different rates. It would be more useful to break down these metrics by stroke but even then it may not be completely useful. The interface itself is clean and easy to read on your smartphone but I find it un-intuitive and hard to get around in. Sometimes it takes a couple tries to initiate a workout. When the workout is over, it downloads with a nice progress bar and then does nothing while it analyzes the data. There's nothing to tell you what it is doing or how long it will take. Typical download/analysis time is 6-8 minutes. Perhaps the most annoying thing is the fastener on the wristband. The band itself has holes spaces about a quarter inch apart. The fastener has two small pegs attached to a hard plastic square. The pegs fit through a specific spot on one end of the band and then through wherever it adjusts to your wrist on the other end of the band. It holds well during usage but the fastener has a habit of coming loose when you take the band off. I've nearly lost mine twice... once in the deep end of the pool. There are some things that might get better! Their website indicates that multiple Moovs for swimming will be coming soon. I hope that means I can start getting credit (more importantly metrics) on my kick. Supposedly, there's an API coming for developers. That's what I'd like to get ahold of more than anything else. Right now, you are stuck with their interpreted data on your smart phone ONLY. There's no website where you can log in and copy my swim over to a spreadsheet. I can't look and the raw data the Moov is generating. If I can get the raw data, I can possibly find a consistent pattern that shows when I've pushed off a wall or when I'm stopped at a wall. Along with the swim logging, I'm starting to explore the other activities the Moov monitors. These may well provide more benefit to my swimming than anything else. I'm 6 weeks away from my next meet, 20 lbs overweight and in the worst shape I've been in 3-4 years. I'm going to try working with the Moov 10 min toning workouts and begin some jogging. If only Moov would provide a mild electric shock when I reach for a bag of potato chips.

Here's an update after a week+ of usage: Sadly, not much has changed. Stroke detection is still hit or miss. I was curious if it was just me so I let my teammate (a far more accomplished swimmer than I) use the Moov for a 1000 IM he was planning to do. On each 50, I timed his split to check the accuracy of the Moov as well. Of the 20 50s, only 6 times were within a quarter second of the split I checked on my watch. Total time for the 1000 was 3 seconds slower that what I clocked. The error range per 50 was +/- 2.5s. It interpreted 5 butterfly lengths as freestyle and one backstroke length as breaststroke (seems like it should at least know when it is upside down). The +/- 2.5s per 50 error range makes the Moov Now practically useless for interval swimming. There's a pretty significant difference between a 50 on :38 and one on :40. On top of that, it frequently interprets short rest intervals as just very long turns. So, if I did 10x100 on 1:15 and came in at 1:12-1:13 for each, it would interpret it as one long 1000 yard swim with an extra long turn every 100 yards. There are other minor annoyances as well. For one thing, it averages your strokes per length and strokes per cycle for the whole workout. That's fine for one long freestyle swim but not very helpful when you are mixing strokes up and swimming at different rates. It would be more useful to break down these metrics by stroke but even then it may not be completely useful. The interface itself is clean and easy to read on your smartphone but I find it un-intuitive and hard to get around in. Sometimes it takes a couple tries to initiate a workout. When the workout is over, it downloads with a nice progress bar and then does nothing while it analyzes the data. There's nothing to tell you what it is doing or how long it will take. Typical download/analysis time is 6-8 minutes. Perhaps the most annoying thing is the fastener on the wristband. The band itself has holes spaces about a quarter inch apart. The fastener has two small pegs attached to a hard plastic square. The pegs fit through a specific spot on one end of the band and then through wherever it adjusts to your wrist on the other end of the band. It holds well during usage but the fastener has a habit of coming loose when you take the band off. I've nearly lost mine twice... once in the deep end of the pool. There are some things that might get better! Their website indicates that multiple Moovs for swimming will be coming soon. I hope that means I can start getting credit (more importantly metrics) on my kick. Supposedly, there's an API coming for developers. That's what I'd like to get ahold of more than anything else. Right now, you are stuck with their interpreted data on your smart phone ONLY. There's no website where you can log in and copy my swim over to a spreadsheet. I can't look and the raw data the Moov is generating. If I can get the raw data, I can possibly find a consistent pattern that shows when I've pushed off a wall or when I'm stopped at a wall. Along with the swim logging, I'm starting to explore the other activities the Moov monitors. These may well provide more benefit to my swimming than anything else. I'm 6 weeks away from my next meet, 20 lbs overweight and in the worst shape I've been in 3-4 years. I'm going to try working with the Moov 10 min toning workouts and begin some jogging. If only Moov would provide a mild electric shock when I reach for a bag of potato chips.