Best open water swim watch

David1959

I’m hoping to get a watch that tracks distance in open water. I’ve read a lot of reviews but they only seem to confuse me as a lot only mention pool swimming. Any suggestions? Budget around €300.

EC1000

David1959 wrote: »

I’m hoping to get a watch that tracks distance in open water. I’ve read a lot of reviews but they only seem to confuse me as a lot only mention pool swimming. Any suggestions? Budget around €300.

In my experience, most watches do open water relatively poorly (in terms of GPS) due to the patchy nature of the GPS signal while swimming. I have the Garmin 935 which is the best one I have had so far in terms of outdoor swimming GPS, but still not great.

Most watches do indoor swimming quite well but that is a separate matter.

Lots of people try work arounds such as putting the watch in your swim cap but I have never tried it.

audiRon

Garmin 735xt. Excellent accurate watch for open water swimming. Been using one since May on long and short swims. No issues once.you hit start with you hand above the water when it has GPS locked.

peter kern

audiRon wrote: »

Garmin 735xt. Excellent accurate watch for open water swimming. Been using one since May on long and short swims. No issues once.you hit start with you hand above the water when it has GPS locked.

doing 101 x100 tomorrow if you and your watch want to join.

audiRon

I'm limited to the NAC at 8am tomorrow, so yes if you're doing it there.
Planning a few 10k sessions over the Xmas if you're around, but again it will be the NAC early.

zico10

peter kern wrote: »

doing 101 x100 tomorrow if you and your watch want to join.

How did this go for you?

cavan4sam

Looking to do a triathlon next year and was looking at this watch , i know its on the upper end of my budget but i want something easy to upload to strava wirelessly

peter kern

zico10 wrote: »

How did this go for you?

not quite as horrible as i expected

(as expected way slower than last year and way also more painful in the last 3 k ) i did get a serious prep talk at around 70 after my 5th 150 m out off 8 1oos ...

planning to do another one of those before the new year

zico10

peter kern wrote: »

not quite as horrible as i expected

(as expected way slower than last year and way also more painful in the last 3 k ) i did get a serious prep talk at around 70 after my 5th 150 m out off 8 1oos ...

planning to do another one of those before the new year

Any chance you could give us a breakdown of the distance à la this guy;

peter kern wrote: »

Always best to ask.

This session is a Christmas tradition in Norway. We were three persons who switched to be in the front 10x100m each. We had starttime @1:45 so it was not very hard, but I never swim this long so felt it pretty good in the arms after 7000m. We had a couple of minutes break after 25, 50 and 75 to drink, pea etc.

My swimming has improved quit a lot the last couple of years, but I’m way better in the pool (25m) then in OW.
But as long as I’m sub 55 min I’m happy. Did that in IM Austria and Norseman, but Kona was not that good for me.

peter kern

zico10 wrote: »

Any chance you could give us a breakdown of the distance a this guy;

I went straight through no breaks i was leading out 101 of the 102

i think till 60 we went off 1.45 and i was holding and average of about 1.34/5 after that i defo got slower and i stopped looking at the watch and took aobut 5-7 sec rest. but to be honest i could not care much less as the only goal was to finish.

to keep me entertained i counted how many times i passed the flag at push off and out of 306 i think i missed 12 most around 80. and 1-2 till abut 60 .



I felt ok till about 50 the rest was a serious struggle. which was why i had agreed to that silly idea it was a good mental excercise. .the only thing that surpised me a bit how quickely i deteriouted from feeling ok to feeling really bad.

at the same time there was 2 where i got a draft from sombody in my lane at around 65 and those 2 drafting felt ok and i happily swam 150s to get a bit more draft. but as i said i go the looks and some swear words from my swim buddy.





if there is anything kurt could learn while my 50s this year are faster than my 50s last year overall i was way off from last year where at this stage i had already a good few weeks of my 200 400 200 sessions in ( this year none so far )

also have to point out that i did the 10 k last year 10 days or so later also had i think 2 x 6 k and an 8 k session before the 10

as i said it did not suprise me its a something thats planned that way.
at the same time is was a slight wake up call that iam a tiny bit further behind than i wanted and i will be a bit under pressure jan and feb .especially since the running hasnt gone to plan the last 3 weeks.



at the same time i do have a solid swim base and i can improve quickly on that.



i hope thats enough breakdown.

oh and overall the plan is to swim like last year bit with a bit more omph in the first 200 , and one other change.




anyway i have derailled this thead enough and we should go back to witch watch will make me swim faster.





my 2 cents iam thinking of upgrading from my casio to an 2003 timex ironman watch as the display is bigger... and they have a timer that beeps every 1.24 min or so.

of course i have no interest on uploading my sessions on strava

and neither do i have any interest charging my watch more than once every 4 years. and the few times i use a watch its usually the pace clock.

Kurt.Godel

@OP Any of the last few Garmin Tri watches are decent at OW tracking (910, 920, 735, and the 935/Fenix5 I think is best) but personally I don't think tracking OW swims adds a lot of info besides curiosity.

@Peter: thats an insightful post, I'd question what was the point of continuing for so long with bad form after 5k besides doggedness (but then I've never attempted 100*100 so maybe the mental doggedness is a valid enough point).

peter kern

Kurt.Godel wrote: »

@OP Any of the last few Garmin Tri watches are decent at OW tracking (910, 920, 735, and the 935/Fenix5 I think is best) but personally I don't think tracking OW swims adds a lot of info besides curiosity.

@Peter: thats an insightful post, I'd question what was the point of continuing for so long with bad form after 5k besides doggedness (but then I've never attempted 100*100 so maybe the mental doggedness is a valid enough point).

i hear this very often that one gets tired one swims with bad from .this is not neccesarilly the case . My form was actually "good" ( well its never good to beginn with so not worse ) i just did not have the power but at no point did my stroke get worse. i just accelerated less powerfully and made sure my hands dont hold as much water but the mechanics where the same both for shoulder driven and hipp driven strokes .

different people react differently to this but i usually responed well to overdistance and did again in this case. importantly i swam the next day again to losen the muscles and todays 90 min swim felt shorter than most 60 min swims i have done and was faster.

as for the watches on certainly can see patterns how they swim with a solid open water watches with the ones you mentioned. so for some people that could be useful. and suprisngly even at kona we see pros not swimming a great line on the way home .

is that worth all the money i have no idea but 100 euro for a 920 2nd hand sounded like a good deal for somebody inclined to buy such a watch and not surprisingly it was gone in less than 12 hours .

i still prefer a csio over a 920 but different folks diferent strokes.



the main isusues i have with garmins zwift coaching et all is that people feel they need them to improve when this is clearly not the case as there is many ways to skin a cat . for some they improve performance and for others they make things worse . but today the industry has managed to get into peoples headt that they need this stuff and people that dont have it feel left out.

joey looks like he did ok without a 700 er 900 er series garmin and those watches have so much pseudo sh.te nobody needs .... ( and of course for some they can have usefull functions) but i would wadger out of 100 garmin users 10 really use those functions properly . ie for most people seawolf etc creats more confusion than help.



i have a guy who used to be more concerned to write the session down than swim ... he stopped that and swam a 400 m pb today ... of course there is other reasons for that ( he has worked bloody hard the last 12 weeks ) but i would certainly not rule out focusing more on swimming and being less distrated is most likely one of them.
when i do technique work and the people focusing more on their watches iam always lost for words. its the same when swimmers chat about none related swiming stuff as soon they finsh a drill. how can those people focus on the task on on hand ( some can most fail)

and one thing is lear over the last 10 15 years our attention spans have deterioted quite a bit. (again i see people who are very good at multi tasking but most people cant just focus on swimming those days for 1 hour)

edit and now iam really out as this is about watches lol

audiRon

@Kurt "I don't think tracking OW swims adds a lot of info besides curiosity."
I'd disagree with this completely. I didn't use a gps watch for years in the open water and started this year. Besides giving me a reasonable indication of pace/500m, which in itself makes an open water training session a proper training session as oppose to just going for a swim, most importantly it tells me how good/bad my sighting has been. I'd go so far as to say that for most people swimming in open water, improving sighting is the single best way to get improvements in time and is often the most neglected open water swimming skill. Having the record of the swim will show how bad sighting has been.
In any longer races I was in this year, having the record of pace and tracking has helped highlight my weaknesses during the review after.

joey100

Just cos my name was mentioned, I agree Peter. All I want in a watch is something that tells me how long I'm running, how far I'm running, my pace and my hr. Anything after that I don't use and I don't usually really look at anything after the session on the computer. distance is only when I'm racing too, don't look at it in training. And the HR is only to slow myself down.

I don't use a swim watch (for the now rare occasion I do swim!), either in training or racing. In the pool I use the clock on the wall, in racing I don't find it any use really. I'm out of the water when I'm out, nothing on a watch will change how I'm swimming during the race or change anything when I get out. I don't really look at my time after the race, more who I get out around, courses aren't equal and aren't all the right distance so it's more of a marker who I get out beside than in what time really. I've had the fancy watches but I found they just gave me more stuff to worry about and stress on, they work for some people but aren't a silver bullet.

peter kern

audiRon wrote: »

@Kurt "I don't think tracking OW swims adds a lot of info besides curiosity."
I'd disagree with this completely. I didn't use a gps watch for years in the open water and started this year. Besides giving me a reasonable indication of pace/500m, which in itself makes an open water training session a proper training session as oppose to just going for a swim, most importantly it tells me how good/bad my sighting has been. I'd go so far as to say that for most people swimming in open water, improving sighting is the single best way to get improvements in time and is often the most neglected open water swimming skill. Having the record of the swim will show how bad sighting has been.
In any longer races I was in this year, having the record of pace and tracking has helped highlight my weaknesses during the review after.

agreed
and i guess most outdoor swimming is lough lena or north dublin . and you are not doing tris.

at the same time why i dont use one.. besides the facts i dont like to charge it , I can see my weakness without a watch as i know where i lost time against the competiton. ( slightly different for races over 5k ) like many people mostly i swim at seapoint and you have buoys and maps that indicate how far they are apart .besides at your level you also have a high awarness how hard you are working when you swim



also i spend a hell of a lot of time to look at swim courses calculate angles after turns check currents look at markers etc and prep is as important as analyzing and the watch dosnt neccesarly tell you if you just didnt sight well , if you did not read the current well. ( the most obvious is bray aquathon where the shortest way to the first buoy is often not the fastest and taking the longer way where you can work with the current pushing you to buoy is faster.

while iam often near the front iam not often leading so i always use people around me for sighting and also see where i lost time or gained time on somebody.

But as i said I would agreee that there is a good case to be made for open water swim gps as sighting is definitely something many people struggle.

btw i think this is all watch related ....

Kurt.Godel

All I can say is I'm unconvinced with the value of OW data from a swim watch. Seeing a swim line afterwards just reinforces what I know from a race (good or bad line), and pace is very much skewed by current (much more value in knowing if I dropped off a group or could jump ahead). If I swim down the beach with the current at 1:00/100m pace, and loop back at 2:00/100m pace, what use is that info really? Most of my OW swimming/racing is in the sea so I guess pace would be more useful on a sheltered course.

I spent the summer swimming with a bunch of SLS swimmers, and doing multiple routes around bouys in all conditions was much more helpful for improving my sighting lines than any GPS record was (we were lucky too in having a coach on the beach providing feedback on swim lines). The one thing I'd also note is how good these swimmers were with sighting (and pace over multiple distances) without hardly any of them wearing GPS watches. Contrast that with a lot of Tritahletes I'd swim with who would be more challenged in these areas, where GPS watches are almost ubiquitous.

Some people get a lot from OW watches but personally I feel they are a case of the tail wagging the dog. The one metric I feel would be genuinely useful is HR as a gauge of effort, but I've never used a water HR strap so can't really comment.

audiRon

Fair nuff. Each to their own.
But, doing specific sets, 500s off 7:30 or whatever, in a lake or in the sea is near impossible without a gps watch especially when you might not get to swim the same route all the time. Sighting is something that improves with lots of practice, I'm not saying the watch will specifically improve sighting but it will show if you are even 10m off course afterwards, even when you might have thought that you were sighting brilliantly during the swim and right on the line.

peter kern

i think this is all good stuff for a potential buyer to consider.