Another praise for S9PP: swimming

Francesco Pagano

I’m not an experienced swimmer and I have low expectations, but I like when my activity data is rich and (presumably) accurate.
I did what for me is a long swim in the sea today, and my watch displayed HR values close to my perceived effort. Displayed distance remained 0 all the time; I made sure to wait a few seconds out of the water before ending the activity, and although I can’t tell how long my swim was, the GPS track seems very accurate. I expected more straight lines instead the route follows what I think I actually covered.

Ecki D.

@Francesco-Pagano this one is from last autumn. I was quite surprised cause earlier swims didn’t work that well from gps. I just carried the watch on my wrist.

DavidCuenca

Hello swimmers!

I don’t know very well what I feel after reading praises about the Suunto 9 PP performance in OPEN WATERS.
In my recent experience of sea swimming sessions of 45 mins more or less the performance of the watch has been poor. I learnt you had to begin the session in the shore in order to catch the GPS signal and the HR about a minute previous to plunder the watch into the water in the first stroke.
So I did.
The watch into the water showed a HR that had nothing to do with what I was feeling. It showed more than 170 bpm when I was plenty of breath. This gap, though enormous, was not a surprise for me as I had previously read about the issues of HR accuracy into the water.
The worst part is the GPS tracking. I have completed 11 sessions over 12 days and the pattern is showing the distance measured about every 2-3 minutes during the first 20 minutes and then… the CHAOS. Frecuently I kept swimming for more than 10 minutes without any distance additon in the watch. The first times I stopped and lifted my whole arm out of the water for a few seconds (about ten) and the distance was then registered. But there were sessions in which this “trick” didn`t work. So frustrated after swimming for about 400-500 not recorded by the GPS, I had to go to the shore, stand up and after 10-20 seconds… voilá the distance covered eventually got recorded. Of course, tracing a pure straight line from the last recorded point and not taking into account the unavoidable zigzags of open water swimming.

As a result, I have sessions in which I swam well but very bad according to the exaggeratedly high HR and the funnily shorted (sometimes in large amounts) distance.

Surprisingly enough, the performance of the same watch in SNORKEL and MERMAID mode is acceptable and significantly better than in OPEN WATER. So I reckon than the big problem is in open water sessions lasting more than 20 minutes.

I bought te 9PP two months ago attracted by the battery life and it roughly reaches the one third of the advertised duration. In open waters I have found another black point of this watch. The only measure you can trust when swimming is the duration. I feel this watch is only reliable for running, walking and cycling. Had I known this fact two months ago I wouldn´t have bought it.

Thanks for reading.

Elipsus

@DavidCuenca
Hey,
About the GPS accuracy, waiting on shore is indeed a good idea, but you should try staying longer (12 minutes and a half precisely).
Basically, all satellites broadcast the positions of the other sats in their constellation, as well as atmospheric conditions, this data is the mos up to date (updated every 2 hours, valid 4 hours) but the bit rate is very slow (Galileo has a higher bit rate and needs only about 6 minutes) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Almanac
That should be more efficient than lifting your arms ^^

About HR, the HRM of 9PP isn’t great, but what worked for me is to wear the watch a lot higher on the wrist (almost 1 third of the arms length), and have it almost uncomfortably tight