Garmin Swim 2, GPS Swimming Smartwatch for Pool and Open Water, Underwater Heart Rate, Records Distance, Pace, Stroke Count and Type, Slate Gray

Pros: ease of useAbility to turn off and on alerts in appEasy to track workoutsEasy buttons (up, down,back, etc)Love the connect appLove the simple screen. Day. Timem steps and yards swam. I don't need more info off the batCons:The band gave me a rash :( and will change itGave 5 stars due to simplicity of use, battery charge lasts 1 week and also alerts management

Lovin my new swim watch. After a recent heart attack, helps me keep an eye on my ticker!

The GPS tracking, and heart rate monitoring functions work well in all conditions. This watch is optimized for pool and open water swimmers. Triathletes may do better with other options. This is my second Swim 2, the first lasted four years until battery life became a problem for marathon swims.Great watch, no complaints.

Update 16June2022: I just want to give a shout out for Garmin phone support. I was having trouble getting GPS to find satellites this summer, and it was losing track mid swim. Mary Beth at Gamin support walked me through several paths to finally get the find time down to under a minute. She was patient and seemed genuinely interested in solving my problem -- a rare event from support lines these days. I'm still loving my Swim 2 after nearly a year.------- original review --------------My earlier Garmin Forerunner 310XT wrist GPS takes forever to achieve satellite lock, and it showed me zipping back and forth while I was open-water swimming, so I needed something new. It's all in the software, because a watch on your wrist will lose a satellite or two while it's under water, and the software needs to adjust for this and not think you have zoomed at high speed to the point where it regains satellite lock. Garmin has been working on this issue for some years, (as have others) and I'm very pleased with the results.I also borrowed an Apple watch for a few open-water swims. Tracking was excellent, but it has a feature that locks out any screen actions while swimming, making it somewhat difficult to control. Also, the Garmin is really built for swimming, so it has many more swimming metrics besides speed that make tracking your progress easier. The other advantage is that the Swim 2 software interface is very smooth on a PC, whereas you have to interact with an Apple watch with an iPad, Mac, etc. (There may be options for the interface that I'm not aware of.)The real killer for my use of the Apple watch was that it was less reliable reading my pulse while swimming. Both Apple and Garmin use optical pulse measurement, which is a bit dicey in the water (both say to adjust the band tight but comfortable), but often I would finish a swim to find that the Apple watch had not recorded my pulse at all. The Garmin may make some mistakes occasionally, but it keeps doing the best it can.Controlling the Garmin is not as intuitive as the Apple watch, but once I got used to it I didn't start activities unintentionally or make similar mistakes too often.On balance, the Garmin Swim 2 is a keeper and has replaced my Timex Triathlon as my main watch. The alarm, timer, and stopwatch features are more flexible than the old Timex and get a lot of use.

## ONE YEAR REVIEW ##Still very happy with this watch as a triathlete. I learned a few tricks with watch and app. I am updating my previous review. I still keep this watch at 4/5 stars.#UPDATED REVIEW#Well, first time buying a Garmin watch and I really like it. I was used to a running/biking GPS “watch” before this. I’m starting triathlon training and I really needed something polyvalent, especially for swimming. I think this watch is the perfect match.#swimming: it tracks very well all your lap as long as you give it a nice push from the wall. The drill function works well too even if you can’t rest at all when drilling otherwise it will calculate all the data wrongly. Open water GPS works well. I know some people are saying that it does not work properly, I have to agree it did glitch a few times for me. But you know it right away and it was only a couple of times... the app provides a lot of data about your swimming, like it is actually insane! At my level, I’m sure I am only using 25% of its capability lol.# running: basic functions, nothing too fancy=speed, avg speed, heart rate, etc. You can switch between pace mode or speed mode.# biking: exact same as running mode. No issue with the vibration of the pavement.# cardio: nothing fancy, just records your heart rate and calories based on heart rate.#pros: really nice looking watch, especially in white. Love it for swimming and for any triathlon training/event. GPS works well (up to 200/300m difference over 10km compared to other GPS device). No main issue at all for this watch. Battery, if not connected to phone via Bluetooth, lasts forever honestly. Only played with app on phone so far, pretty sure the soft on computer is good too. Customer support is pretty helpful and efficient.#cons: GPS takes awhile before connecting sometimes, like 6-10min. Which is kinda really long when seating in the car ready to go... GPS does glitch badly sometimes, but it is pretty rare and you know right away when something is wrong.Disappointed that it does not recognize your swim exercice more accurately. Watch does not give maximum speed for any mode, you can only find out your top speed once you downloaded the data to your phone and use the app...the sleep mode is not as good as other smart watches and also does not sync with your alarm set on your phone (so the watch does the maths itself for when you go to bed and wake up, so usually pretty wrong).You cannot edit your personal records, like the “categories” are pre set by Garmin and you can’t do anything about it (like 10km, half marathon and nothing else for running...).Price is kinda pricy (still a year later), especially for athletes with no big budget. I’m sure it would have much more success if it was at $199/219...