Today’s post is a review of the Swimmo swim watch that was built from the ground up as a help, and guide, for swimmers of all levels of experience.
Swimmo has an interesting history, starting with a personal observation of the company founder confirmed later in research and countless conversations with swimmers: swimmers have been waiting for a simple solution that will allow them to measure and analyze their progress during their swimming workout.
After a very successful Kickstarter campaign, months of hard work at the design of the watch, and more months on the production process, the Swimmo watch is now available!
Here’s my product review of the Swimmo swimming watch and app:
Swimmo Swim Watch Features
The Swimmo swim watch is a specialized swimming watch that has a huge set of features for swimmers. Swimmo, of course, has all the basic features a swim watch has to have.
It contains a 3-sensor based precise lap counting for all pool lengths, and also a mode for unknown sizes in which you simply see how many laps you have done instead of the distance.
Useful, right?
Especially for those people who swim for near an hour per day, you’ll surely want to track this without having to keep count the whole time!
Finally, you have an efficient answer!
You can also measure your distance, duration, and pace so your swim workout is always measured in all aspects.
With the Swimmo, you can easily compare your workouts and improvements!
Tracking your workouts is one of the best ways to hold yourself accountable, and the Swimmo is a swimmers best friend for this!
Swimmo Bio-Metrics
On top of all the basic swim watch metrics, the Swimmo training watch goes much much further in measuring your swim and body than any other swimming watch out.
First of all, there are two important biometrics that are built into the Swimmo.
This is very interesting for many swimmers for health reasons, and to measure the effectiveness and effect their swimming workouts are having on their body.
The two features contained in the Swimmo are a heart rate monitor from the wrist and precise calorie counter that uses your heart rate data to make the result more accurate.
Pretty awesome, right?
Smart Features
One of the most exciting features of the Swimmo swimming training watch allows the device to not only show you your results after the workout but also guide you during your swim!
The smart feature allows you to choose your swimming goal such as pace, or heart rate zone, and you will be notified via distinctive vibrations when you need to swim faster or slow down.
Honestly, I think this is amazing technology.
I have never heard of another swim watch being able to accomplish this!
Additionally, for other goals, you can turn on notifications for every 25% of the goal finished (for distance or swimming workout duration).
This is a cool way to improve your consistency with pace training for endurance workouts or to stay in the right heart rate zone for fat burning workouts.
No matter what your goal with swimming is, the Swimmo swim watch will help you get there!
The Swimmo Watch App
The Swimmo swimming mobile app has three main purposes and introduces them to you all in a very modern and intuitive interface that lets you do most of the important things in a few taps.
The app is also very good-looking, which is still not a standard for other swimming mobile apps available.
The first main feature is the possibility to create and edit your own custom goals that are then synced to the Swimmo swim watch.
The second main module is about the analysis of your past workouts.
One aspect that is very helpful in the design of the app is that you can just glance at the chart, or go deeper into very detailed lap-by-lap (and soon set-by-set) analysis. This way, you always have the analytics with you, and can easily be aware of your progress. This really is a modern swimming log.
The third part of the app lets you customize your watch, and control all of its settings on a big smartwatch screen.
Comparatively, other swim watches have small and difficult to read displays.
The app is easy and enjoyable to use!
It is very refreshing that a product is mobile-first, and focuses on mobile platform integration for swimmers!
Best Swimmo Alternatives (2021)
Although the Swimmo is certainly one of the best watches for swimming, there are a few other options as well. Here are the best Swimmo alternatives:
Garmin Swim 2
When talking about the best watches for swimming, the Garmin Swim 2 has to be the first that comes to mind. The Garmin records distance, pace, stroke count, and stroke type, along with your general swimming efficiency.
Additionally, it has an open-water swim mode that is more useful for those who desire to swim in lakes, oceans, or rivers.
The Garmin Swim 2 also offers online analysis, custom workout creation, and the Garmin Connect community which is great for learning purposes.
The Garmin Swim 2 has extensive battery life as well.
The Swimmo swim watch app is slightly more extensive, but the Garmin is certainly an excellent user-friendly swim watch.
Additionally, the Garmin Swim 2 is slightly cheaper.
- GPS swimming smartwatch for the pool and open water
- Monitors underwater estimated wrist-based heart rate during swim activities
- Pool swim mode: records distance, pace, stroke count, stroke type and SWOLF (gauges swimming...
- Open-water swim mode: uses built-in GPS for swims in lakes, oceans or rivers; records distance,...
- Offers advanced features for staying on pace, logging drills and more
Apple Watch 6
If you’re willing to spend a little more money and your goal is to have a swimming watch that does more than just track swimming workouts, your best option is the Apple Watch 6.
The Apple Watch provides only basic information for swimming workouts such as heart rate, pace, splits, and sets, but you also get all the other uses out of the Apple Watch.
- GPS model lets you take calls and reply to texts from your wrist
- Measure your blood oxygen with an all-new sensor and app
- Check your heart rhythm with the ECG app
- The Always-On Retina display is 2.5x brighter outdoors when your wrist is down
- S6 SiP is up to 20% faster than Series 5
Concluding Thoughts – My Swimmo Review
The Swimmo watch primary strengths and unique features are the super tight app integration, and real-time feedback via vibrations that make using the device easy and useful for swimmers no matter their level of experience.
Although the Swimmo watch is a great swim watch, there are other options and I cannot say that it is the best swim watch of 2021. However, for those of you who are only interested in a swim watch for swimming and not a multi-function watch, the Swimmo offers some unique benefits!
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2 Responses
I’ve had the Swimmo watch for about 2 1/2 yrs. I’m not much of a techy so I had to get used to the features. What I like most about this watch is the screen is well lit making it easy to see data while swimming.
My only complaint is the optical HRM is iffy – sometimes accurate , sometimes not, and that’s outside the water. It would have been nice to use the HRM feature instead of a HRM strap. Oh well, can’t have it all.
All in all I highly recommend this watch for swimming.
I recently acquired a Swimmo Watch to start digitizing my training results (early January 2021). However, my experience is completely different to the one you had. The Watch is very accurate for swimming freestyle (even other styles) but for training drills: a completely different story:
– It fails to track laps with kick drills (0% and using the kick&drill feature). Other drills like (6 kicks 1 stroke) have an accuracy of 50% at its best and the response of customer service: “Regarding the mixed drills that you’ve mentioned – 6 kicks + 1 stroke, etc. This would be treated similarly to changing style mid lap, which is one of the factors that may confuse the watch, as written in our FAQ. The kick&drill mode should be used for more unified, constant drills like a lap or more or just kicks, etc.”
-Also, the connection to the smartphone is tricky initially after a reset of the watch. This seems like a technical issue not refined.
-Also, the watch does not have a touch screen but depends on hitting hard the watch and that makes the usability a little bit awkward. Also, it fits weridly on the wrist and Swimmo recommends using the watch in the dominant hand for better results.
I have to jump through a lot of hoops to get this watch to work with a 70% accuracy level and the results are useless still because data is still incorrect/biased.