Best swimming watches from Garmin, Polar & Samsung | The Sun

WANT to improve your speed or distance in the pool? Then these watches for swimming could be the stroke of genius you need.

Whether your preference is doing laps in the pool or hitting the open water, a decent swimming watch could help make all the difference when it comes to increasing your swimming distance or improving your time.

These technical watches come with various settings that can collect all sorts of data, from the number of laps completed, overall distance and heart rate.

Some will even measure your SWOLF (swimming efficiency), which in the pool is measured by adding the number of strokes taken to do a length and the time taken to swim that length, so the lower the score the better.

Some watches double up as fitness trackers that can give feedback on a variety of other sports too, as well as monitor everyday well-being such as sleep and step count.

Choosing a swimming watch can feel quite daunting as there’s a huge variation when it comes to technicality and price. So, whether you’re a professional triathlete or someone who needs a waterproof smartwatch for your holiday, we’ve got something for every budget and ability.

Garmin Swim 2

• Garmin Swim 2, £200 from Amazon – buy here

Pros: It’s swimming-specific so offers more swimming features than most of the other watches, great battery life that can last up to seven days in smartwatch mode, a little less when using sports modes every day

Cons: Not cheap

Rating: 5/5

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This is one of the few upmarket sports watches that are specifically aimed at swimming. It's got settings that can monitor Pool Swim, Open Water Swim, Run, Bike, and Cardio (Indoor), making it a great option for swimmers, runners, cyclists and especially triathletes.

The run setting also works for walking and hiking and step count can be set up to show on the watch face itself or viewed on the Garmin Connect Mobile smartphone app.

The Garmin Swim 2 has built-in GPS and metric checkers to monitor heart rate, track distance, record pace, log drills, recognise stroke count and type, work out distance covered per stroke, register your SWOLF and a whole lot more.

The swimming smartwatch is waterproof up to 5ATM which means it’s water resistant up to 50m in depth for ten minutes and it works just as well in pools as it does in open water, with specific features for each, although GPS is better suited for the open water.

One of the most interesting elements of the watch to test was the workout mode, where you can structure your own session through the app and download it onto the watch.For example, you can programme the length of your warm-up, the first bit of your swim, a rest period, another swim, and cool down and the watch can send alerts as you pass through each stage.

The alert system is specifically useful when setting up pool drills, as the alert tells you when you should be completing each length/ turning.

Outside of the pool, it acts as a top-level smartwatch that can keep track of everything from step count, heart rate, sleep and even has a stress-tracking mode. But, for the hefty price, this is best suited to those who have a real interest in improving their swimming. 

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Samsung Galaxy Watch5

• Samsung Galaxy Watch5, £255.55 from Amazon – buy here

Pros: Doubles up as a great day-to-day smartwatch, goal-setting markers for improved health and mindset, looks good, can stream Youtube Music 

Cons: It can be a little complicated to navigate at first but once you get the hang of the extensive settings, you can learn a lot.

Rating: 5/5

This latest iteration in the Samsung Galaxy watch line is all about health and fitness; it's got numerous features to support hitting your goals and understanding your well-being.

Like a lot of watches that can be used for swimming, it offers many other sports modes and can monitor up to 90 different activities including gym workouts and specific strength exercises such as rounds of push-ups, arm curls or squats.

When it comes to swimming, the Samsung Galaxy5 is waterproof up to 50 metres for about 30 minutes and comes with a swim lock feature for when it’s being used in the pool. The water sports tracking is extensive and includes aqua aerobics, outdoor swims, canoeing, kitesurfing, waterskiing and various other watersports that all have their own setting on the watch.

Before your swim, you can add in the length of the pool to get an accurate lap and distance count, which you can check on the watch dashboard during and after your swim, along with your calorie count. You can target a number of laps or duration before heading into the pool too.

As well as swimming and sports, the watch can track varying degrees of heart health, monitor sleep and stress and also track the menstrual cycle.

Polar Vantage V2

• Polar Vantage V2, £409.99 from Amazon – buy here

Pros: Excellent battery life of over 130 hours

Cons: It doesn’t have onboard music like some competitors, very pricey

Rating: 5/5

This slick multi-sport watch is a premium version of the older Polar Vantage option loved by triathletes. Like its predecessor, it can be used for swimming but also for monitoring a multitude of other sports and wellbeing vitals.

The watch can be operated from the five buttons around its face which makes it feel more ‘watch’ than a smartwatch, but you can control it with its touch screen if that’s your preference.

This is a sturdy watch with a solid hardware face that is protected from scratching and the aluminium casing helps to increase GPS range and accuracy.

This watch is for those who are serious about data and cutting those seconds and milliseconds off their PBs: the watch detects your swimming style, distance travelled, pace, strokes and rest times in the pool and can also track distance and strokes in the open water swimming, too.

If you’re training for a particular race and practising on the actual race route, the GPS tracking can show you exactly where you could make tiny changes in the open water.

One thing we enjoyed about the Polar Vantage 2 is how it logs your energy used into macros, breaking down how much fat, carb and protein you burned on the workout. The watch also gives you an overall look at how much training you’ve done all week.

The heart rate monitor sits neatly on the back of the watch in an optimum place to pick up an accurate heart rate and informs you when to take a rest day and when it’s an optimum day to train because your body is well rested.

Wahoo ELEMNT Rival

• Wahoo Elemnt Rival Sports Watch with GPS, £288.90 from Amazon – buy here

Pros: Battery can last 14 days in watch mode or 24 hours in GPS mode.

Cons: No lifestyle extras, no music option, it’s another pricey one – so maybe better suited to those looking for something more technical

Rating: 4/5

Also available is a special edition of the watch in collaboration with, and named after, the American long-distance runner, the Molly Seidel Edition D, £249 from Jura watches  – buy here

If you’re looking for something that sits in the middle of an everyday smartwatch that can track swimming and a more serious swimming watch that is used for racing or elite competitions, then this could be a good transition swimming watch.

Like many of the other swimming watches, it is aimed at triathletes, which does mean it has good open water settings as well as pool settings.

It can do the usual measuring of laps, distance, SWOLF and duration but it doesn’t have drill mode for the pool – which might be annoying if that’s something you like to practise to help increase overall speed. 

It performs well in open water but isn’t quite as accurate as some of the watches that cost more, but for the price, it is probably good enough for those not looking to win races and smash PBs.

The watch does offer quite a few lifestyle extras such as step count and sleep analysis and even shows the muscles worked during training.

Oppo Watch Free

• Oppo Watch Free, £69 from Very.co.uk – buy here or from Oppo – buy here

Pros: Good budget smartwatch with swimming features, but better for shallower waters

Cons: It’s a bit basic and the metrics are better suited to recreational swimmers rather than competitive swimmers

Rating: 3/5

This is a good all-around smartwatch for the less regular swimmer who wants to include swimming into a wider fitness programme as it offers over 100 different sports modes.

This piece of wearable tech is more a jack of all trades than a specialist swimming watch, but that doesn’t mean it can’t tick a few boxes when it comes to getting in lengths.

Its 5ATM waterproofing means it’s at home in the pool where it can record laps, speed and duration. It can also be used in open water where it can record distance, log calories burnt and track the duration of a workout.

It probably isn’t suitable for deeper water activities such as snorkelling, diving or high-pressure water sports such as surfing. It can also be sensitive to more extreme water temperatures, so you'll want to take it off when having a long hot shower or using a steam room or sauna.

The watch is fitted with general health trackers such as 24-hour heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking through its Osleep feature which works to improve sleep. The watch face will show incoming calls and notifications and it has music playback and ‘find my phone’.

Nabaiji

• Nabaiji Swimming Pool Watch SL500, £29.99 from Decathlon – buy here

Pros: Super cheap, still quite accurate 

Cons: Doesn’t offer lots of in-depth data analysis 

Rating: 3/5

This might be the cheapest swimming watch in the review but it still packs a punch when it comes to its offering, especially considering its low price.

It offers an impressive waterproofing of up to 30 metres and buttons that still work underwater, the watch can measure distance and log lengths in 25, 33 and 50-metre pools whether you’re doing breaststroke, butterfly, backstroke or front crawl.

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The accuracy when counting lengths was off every now and again and Decathlon (that sells the watch) put accuracy at 95% which might be a tiny bit generous but I would say over 90% for sure.

Other than telling the time and taking it for a swim, this is not supposed to be an everyday smartwatch so would work best in addition to your usual watch if you don’t fancy risking that in the water. 

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