Poolmate watch

This title "Poolmate watch" sounds like about how to watch your pool mate swimming :D

This title "Poolmate watch" sounds like about how to watch your pool mate swimming :D :banana: When I saw the title, I thought it was about how to meet ("pick-up") someone at the pool!!!! Hardee, Ha, Ha:cool:

Be sure to let us know how the watch performs when you get it. I got my watch today! :applaud: Well, it arrived yesterday, but I missed the postal delivery by 2 minutes, so I had to go in and pick it up in person today. I was surprised to get it so quickly since it was coming overseas. I won't be able to try it out in the pool until tomorrow, but at first glance, I love it already. I got the grey/blue one, which I think looks nice. I don't consider it overly huge, and certainly not flimsy like someone else said in an earlier post. The display has nice big letters and numbers, which I really appreciate. It is extremely easy to program, which is a huge plus. I have it all set up and didn't even have to refer to the instructions. :D Also, you can easily switch between a meters or yards pool, so no need to buy more than one watch, which another poster eluded to doing. So, once I try it out in the water, I'll provide an update -- but, from what I've read from those who already own/use it, the thing should work as advertised. :cool:

I'm certainly looking forward to the review. I found the watch available on amazon and one of the online swim stores (swimoutlet?). I've recently been trying to concentrate on number of strokes per 100, but since my :censor: pool requires three laps per 100, I have enough trouble counting my laps. If this watch can count my strokes, laps AND I can use it to time my 100s, then I'm buying one!!!

I'll be interested to hear how the lap counter works in practice. I'm assuming it's looking for a pause of some duration in your strokes and picks that up as a turn (and, thus, the start of a new lap). Maybe v2.0 of the watch will have GPS built in. That would be cool because it could then be used for open water swims, too. Add in some way to interface with a PC and you could upload your swims to something like Google Maps or Earth.

I'll be interested to hear how the lap counter works in practice. I'm assuming it's looking for a pause of some duration in your strokes and picks that up as a turn (and, thus, the start of a new lap). The manual at www.swimovate.com/EnglishmanualPool-Mate.pdf answers that question.

Sorry for the delay with my review. I went to swim on Friday and found the pool at my gym overrun with a youth swim team (actually, that's not a bad thing). Saturday I swim Open Water practice and the watch does not work in that environment. Sunday, is my rest day and Monday I have a swim class, which didn't give me any time to really try it out. So.... to make a long story even longer, :D I used the Pool-Mate during my Masters workout this morning and couldn't be happier with it! Some highlights: Very accurate - My coach keeps count of our yardage on a white board during our workouts and the total on my watch matched her numbers exactly. I can pause between swims - Another swimmer in my Masters group has a similar watch by Oregon Scientific that does not allow him to pause. If he stops for more than 30 seconds, it resets. The Pool-Mate does not do this. All you need to do is press a button to pause and when you're ready to resume swimming, press it again. It provides stroke count - Yay! No more counting strokes! It provides stroke efficiency - What a cool piece of information! I have been working hard to retrain myself in the High Elbow/Early Vertical Catch technique, and having this feature has given me instant feedback that I'm doing the right thing. Stroke efficiency is based on the Swim Golf method (new to me) which breaks down to distance travelled per stroke and time per stroke. less than 30 - Excellent-Professional Athlete 30-40 - Very Good (I consistantly swam 38) :) 40-50 - Above Average 50-70 - Average more than 70 - Below Average Easy to program - The only time I refer to the user's manual is to better understand what each feature is capable of doing. I have owned quite a few sports watches and the Pool-Mate is by far the easiest to program. There are two slight drawbacks: It is recommended that you do not dive with the watch as it may drive water into the case, which will kill the electronics. You cannot press the buttons while underwater. Not really a problem, as I don't see myself needing to do this. In all, I am very glad I made the purchase and look forward to many happy laps using my Pool-Mate.

I'm sold...I'm getting one. Thanks for the review!

I ordered one, too, and have swum with it in 2 practices so far. It seems to be pretty accurate at counting freestyle laps, for me, but less accurate for other strokes. It counted only half of my laps in an IM set, and very few of my laps in a breaststroke set today, but had no problem with my breaststroke laps in the previous workout. It also switches out of lap-counting mode if I rest too long between sets. Granted, today was a taper workout and I had long rests. Maybe that will be less of a problem when I switch back to more normal practices. Pressing the pause button to exempt the rests & kick sets is a problem for me, but that's user error. I forget to unpause it before starting the next set or rep. Maybe I'll get better at that. The stroke counting seems good, both on freestyle and on non-free laps that it manages to detect. Since you wear it on only one hand at a time, of course, it only counts half of your freestyle strokes. So it can't tell the difference between a 12-stroke lap and a 13-stroke lap, for example. Also, I'm not sure whether it's counting my first (underwater breakout) stroke, in addition the the hand-entry strokes that I'd normally count. I agree that the efficiency measure (swim golf) is cool, although it is best suited for long sets, or short rests, or someone who can reliably remember to hit the pause button between sets.

Here's an update, prompted by my first open-water swim with the PoolMate watch. Even though the instructions claim the watch "will not work in Open Water", it did great at counting my strokes. It was able to tell me that I took 812 strokes out, and 898 strokes back for my loop in the local lake yesterday. It can't count laps, of course (and detected a few phantom laps), so it can't give pace or swim golf info. But all I was after was a stroke count, and that seems to be quite accurate. Good to know! I'm swimming an OW event this coming Saturday and was planning on using my watch to see how well it worked at counting my strokes. I'm swimming a 2K, so it will be interesting to see how may strokes I take to complete the distance. :) I was thinking about the Swim Golf efficiency score and I think it would be feasible to take the total number of strokes in my 2K race, plus the number of seconds it took, and then divide by 80, which is the number of 25m lengths in a 2K swim to get my average 25m score.