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Swimmo, it’s MORE THAN tracking your swim

We wrote an article in 2016 about counting your laps while swimming in a pool.

This post is more of my personal review of the new smart swim watch called Swimmo which we had recently received.

We had been waiting for more than a year and imagined our excitement to give this new watch a try in swimming pool.

When we unwarped the box, the instruction manual informed us to charge our Swimmo watches to wake them up.

Finally it’s awake!

The screen isn’t a touch screen per se, it is more of a tap screen, so it has to be tapped a bit hard to enter a selection. the selections are done by flicking the wrist outward or inward.

We checked out the smart watch and here are a few settings that it has.

Start Swimming Mode

Track Pulse Mode

Adjust Swimmo Mode

This is mode to choose when I want to connect the watch to the Swimmo App in my phone.

Turn Off Mode

When I tap onto the Start Swimming Mode on the watch, there are several workouts that I can choose from.

There are Distance Tracking, Calorie Tracking, Pulse Tracking, Pace Tracking and Time Tracking.

Distance Tracking Mode

Other Tracking Mode

To check my pulse, I tap Track Pulse on the watch.

It will first appears like below.

And give it a few seconds and it shows my pulse.

To connect the watch to my phone, I first downloaded the Swimmo App.

Swimmo App

When I open the App, the app will want to turn on bluetooth. Once bluetooth is on, the App will search for the watch as shown below.

After the App found the watch then it will sync with it. note: the syncing process can be very long. And I think if there are more than 1 swimmo device in the vicinity then it takes longer.

Then, the App can be used after syncing is complete.

Personal goals can be added to the New Workout below.

New Workout Tab

History Tab

Achievement Tab

Settings Tab

In the settings –> troubleshooting, there is an update option, to update the firmware on the watch. when I clicked on it, it took several minutes the watch is unresponsive, but I noticed the green light from the heart sensor was blinking. I guess that means the update is working.

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to test out the Swimmo watch.

Here is the data retrieved from the Swimmo watch.

Below is the workout details that aren’t seen on the previous 4 screenshots.

The cool thing about this Swimmo watch is that it tracks my pulse for every lap except during the first 3 laps. Not sure why that is. It could because the pulse tracking delays and took some time to track.

Here are my personal reviews of the Swimmo App and watch.

THE PROS

Tracks pulse without using the traditional heart rate monitor strap.

Now this is a feature that I absolutely love! Tracking my pulse while swimming is so freaking cool! And it can be done on my very own wrist. I just need to make sure that the watch is tight enough on my wrist.

Personal goals can be added to the Swimmo App.

I personally feel this can help swimmer to focus on achieving their goals weather it’s distance, time, speed, etc. The same can be said for the several workout modes on the Swimmo App.

Saves battery since Swimmo watch can be turned off.

It will remain off if I don’t move my wrist or if I keep it somewhere where there is no movement. And if I want to wake it up, I just move my wrist or tap the watch.

Detailed workout data.

It’s amazing to see how much data that the watch can capture during a workout. The one that impresses me is the one where it tracks every single lap.

THE CONS

Searching and syncing takes its sweet time.

I personally feel it can be such a pain in the ass for the Swimmo App to search and sync with the watch.

The issue that we experience is that since there are 2 of us having 2 Swimmo watches, when we tried to connect our phones to our Swimmo watches at the same time, most of the time, the app fail to search and took forever to sync if they ever did sync.

When we are about 100m-300m apart then the searching and syncing process is considerably faster.

No back lighting option.

When I was resting from my swim under a hot sun, I was struggling to see my distance on the watch. I couldn’t see anything. I had to move the watch under my own shadow for me to be able to see anything on the watch.

There is no history on the watch itself.

Looks like the watch is purely designed to track the current swim. Any data from previous swims won’t be stored in the watch. And to prevent losing the current data, best to sync it right away to the Swimmo App.

The Workout has to have 10 workouts.

This is a feature that I find annoying. I don’t want to have 10 workouts on the app and the watch. It’s enough if I can have 4 or less workouts on both app and watch. It’s like there is no way to have less than 10 workouts because after editing the app crashes.

The App keeps on crashing after I edit my workout.

It is frustrating for me when after I edited my workout and when it comes to saving the new workout, the app froze and then it crashed. This happened several times before I was able to save and update the watch.

All adjustments had to be made on the App.

Unlike other swim watch that I had used before, any adjustments that I make had to be done on the Swimmo App and then it saves and updates the watch.

If I want to add a new workout goal, it has to be done on the App.

Adding a goal the workout on the Swimmo App

Changing the pool distance also to be done on the Swimmo App

The Swimmo App isn’t able to connect with Endomondo. Yet.

I personally love using Endomondo to keep track of my activities. Including cycling, hiking and running.

At the time of writing this post, it’s currently unable to connect with Endomondo. On the kickstarter page it claims to be able to do so, but after further checking they have an issue with the endomondo API, so it is not available yet.

I can’t say for the rest of the Apps other than Facebook, it connects with Facebook.

The Swimmo watch currently has no open water mode.

I was so excited to test this watch in the open water and only to be disappointment because it doesn’t have open water mode yet at the time of writing this post.

I understand that it will come as Swimmo is currently working on adding new features to the software. Apparently they claim the hardware is available on the watch, but the software is not yet ready.

MY CONCLUSION

Swimmo App and watch can assist swimmers to be better swimmers, but only if the swimmers are looking to improve their skills.

For me, my focus is to achieve distance, either 1500m or 2500m per swim. In addition, I’m also looking to work on my speed. Therefore Pace Tracking is useful and can help to keep me in check and making sure that I finish my swim in a certain amount of time.

It can also be used to track how may laps when swimming in swimming pool regardless of the length of the pool. However, if you only want to count your laps while swimming, there are other affordable alternatives. Check this link.

But for US199, I consider Swimmo watch is expensive considering that it is only to be used for one type sport..

If there are people who are doing multiple sports then getting Swimmo Watch might not be the best idea unless they are looking to improve their performance in terms of their swimming. Otherwise might as well go for multi sport watches. Check this link.

Despite the cons that I mentioned above, I will still wear my Swimmo to the swimming pool. Especially for its ability to track heart rate while swimming. I look forward to make full use of it, explore more and benefit from it.

I also mentioned above that I swim in the open water and since Swimmo doesn’t have open water mode yet, I will use my newly arrived watch, Suunto Ambit3 Sport which had arrived a few days later after we received the Swimmo watches.

Do your own due diligence before making a purchase.

If you are interested to get your hands on the Swimmo watch, then check www.swimmo.com.

All the best and keep on swimming.

Hayatti Rahgeni

The Effortless Swim Team

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