@Webby-Skymaster I love my swimming, pool, lake, sea, I don’t care: just let me in the water! I’ve dabbled in all of the watches over the years. Here’s my take:
Garmin + their pool belt is great for recovery metrics afterwards, but it’s a faff and I’m not sure it’s worth it. Their recent problems around distance tracking in a pool (their support told me I swim too fast; I’m really not that fast) is woeful.
Apple: great for distance in the pool, eh for HR, but at least they reject bad data aggressively.
Suunto: sure whatever. It’s been a sorry state since the hallowed era of the Ambit 3 and teaching it my swimming style.
Form: and done. Take all the other swimming trackers, pop them in your locker, and accept this is the way. I know, it’s not integrated into any other system, but it’s so good I don’t care. HR is spot-on, distance is spot-on, workout generation is a delight, their training plans the same. Their two weaknesses are the OHR in cold water (12° and below) is obviously innacurate due to vasoconstriction, even over a 45m swim, and… there’s another but it escapes me. Oh! Field of view. If I’m somewhere pretty, I’m less likely to use them, but that’s rare.
No Suunto integration but it’s just a determined day’s vibe code away, and there’s already some promising RE work available.
Wishing you the peace in accepting no watch manufacturer cares about swimming enough to put the time in to solve the very complex problem of the last 20% of implementation, and the flexibility to move to the Form side.
