You fail to mention what I feel is the number 1 pro/con. Interoperability. While I do have some Apple products, I do NOT have an iphone. Using a Apple Watch isn't really even an option. Conversely Garmin is agnostic for pairing and syncing to a mobile device, they support iOS and Android both. Also, you can gain quite a few features in the various Garmin line moving from the Swim 2 to another model, even the low FR255 - especially important for multiple activities to track.
Thanks. As an update on the story, someone stole the apple watch from me. It's like the universe said "ah, you like the garmin, ok, so you don't need this apple watch, i'm gonna let someone else have it"
Thanks - I thought I was going crazy because no apple watch reviews for swimming ever seem to mention that it SUCKS in terms of accuracy and interface. Forget about trying to time intervals...unless you love random numbers... The Garmin Swim 2 is bullet proof in the water....but as you say...outside of the pool it's as hopeless and the apple watch is in the pool. 🤣 Roll on the Swim 3
As a masters swimmer. This review is exactly opposite to what I have found over the years with AW now onto the ultra 2. I mean not being able to see how many metres you’ve done🤪🤪 are you not looking at the screen😂😂. It tracks every stoke possible, choice sets, drill types, even kick detection works perfectly. The other guys Garmin are constantly missing many metres, they don’t have kick set detection, the only Garmins that are ok for metretracking, are fenix pro or forerunner 935 is ok for swimming.
I might have not known how to set it up to see how many meters I had done. I had to contantly unlock it, unsuccessfully try to work it with my wet fingers to see where I was with my practice. This was the biggest negative for me with the AW. You mean to say there was a setting i missed where I could have been able to keep my progress on screen at all times? 😅
Yes and even turn auto water lock off if you want, or set the side button and crown for pause, or use the crown button to navigate instead of wet fingers……
My last comment? Well the guys sometimes ask me how many metres have been swam. After a big set. As they don’t have any type of watch, as they are die hard pros who don’t use any watch. Just memory and pace clock.
The inaccuracy you mentioned was very surprising to me (apple watch). I use a series 3 for swimming and it works pretty well. Over a km it doesn’t miss more than 1 lap. In smaller pools (less than 25m) freestyle doesn’t track as well. If I tap the screen it wakes up so I can see the data. Pausing is also super easy. My biggest issue is simply that it’s getting old and a bit slow. So I’ve started looking at a new watch. Garmin is/was high up the list. I liked the idea of the forerunner, having extra features like walking and hiking. I’ve been reading some reviews and people have been saying it’s not accurate (tracks more laps than you actually did), you shouldn’t push the buttons underwater apparently. Since the swim is super specific these issues will probably not be present. The lack of other sports is a bit of a dealer breaker. The main reason I don’t want a new apple,watch is that I don’t wear it during the day anymore (I wear a regular watch) and also that it’s expensive. Do you or does anyone in the comments have experience with the forerunner line for swimming?
This was really great. I stumbled across it when I was trying to find a video about which buttons to push on my swim2. I find it extremely difficult to use, having been an Apple Watch user for 6 years. However, I agree with you that the swim2 is terrific for swimming and, most importantly, it actually waterproof - unlike my Apple Watch 3. I got the swim2 because when I wore my Apple Watch in 2 m of water it stopped working. I thought I had ruined it and called Apple asking why they say it is waterproof (not resistant) to 10 meters. They had no answer and I gave up. The cool thing though is that when I left the Apple watch sitting on my bathroom counter for three days trying to decide what to do with it, It actually came back to life. But I think it’s pretty crappy of Apple to claim it is waterproof to a certain depth when it is not. I love my Garmin now that I have sort of figured out how to use it and I’m working on figuring out how to work all those buttons in the correct order to maximize my use of it. For the past two years, I’ve been OK with just knowing how to start and stop the swim tracker. You are very entertaining and I have subscribed just to listen to you talk about other topics.
Thank you Stephanie! Hope you enjoy the content. Sometimes the Garmin2 does screw up the counting and I categorize it into 2: 1. When it counts a bit more than I swim and it's annoying 2. When it counts a bit less than I swim and it's unacceptable 😂
I completely agree with you. I have the Fenix 6 Pro for a long time and I'm very happy with it. I guess it is similar to the Garmin Swim 2. Do you know about it?
Using the Swim2 I have to say it is NOT accurate at all. I don't know how apple does (I want to try..) but after years of using the Swim2 I always knew it's not accurate. you can't get 2 pools right.
@@MeitalBarSela I think Garmin is better sw when you are interested in sport, I swim in Herzlyia with former competitive swimming people and all of them have Garmin, anyhow Apple is the other good choice, the other watches are missing pools like Stunto
How accurate are the auto sets on Garmin? I’m looking into switching from Apple Watch but I don’t want to push buttons for every new set. I just prefer to swim and forget about the watch.
In my experience they were better than those of the apple watch. Depends on where you swim though. If it's a pool, you have to put the pool measurements. If it's open water, you have to wait until it syncs with the GPS.
I too have the Swim 2 and like its swimming metrics. My only problem with the watch is - like other Garmin watches - the battery. I have to re-charge it after every swim, which is at least three times a week. I bought a Coros Pace 2 as well, hoping its running metrics were equally good in the pool. It’s not. The Coros watch is way off. Great runner’s watch with a super battery, but it’s not good for swimming. An example is the pace. The Garmin will regularly show me swimming at a pace of 1.20, while the Coros will show me doing the same effort at 7.50 - which is way, way, wrong. So I end up having to re-charge the Garmin, but will,at least see metrics like my Swolf reading that makes sense.
I've had Garmin 2 for 2.5 years and I recharge it once a week or once every 5 days. I don't swim more than 4km/week though so i imagine the more you swim the more battery it needs. Didn't know about Coros. Thanks for sharing.
A 30% and 50% accuracy rate essentially means the Apple watch shouldn't even be in this comparison video about swimming. I wonder also why the Garmin wouldn't be 100% on accuracy, especially in a pool swim where Garmin watches typically track your turns in a pool. Even my older (5 years) Garmin still accurately tracks my laps perfectly because I have set the distance ahead of time - 25 meters, 50 meters, etc. Why wouldn't this also be the case with the Swim 2? You never unpack where the inaccuracies come from, which is a miss in this video IMO.The only issue I could see is in open water where GPS could be dodgy. My hope is that the technology is better than it was before with my older Garmin, which admittedly had issues in accurately tracking my distances in some open water swims.
Good feedback. Thanks! In my experience it's not 100% accurate in a pool. But very close to it. You're right, I didn't cover where the inaccuracies come from. In the pool at least they come from it applying intervals without being the case.
Hi, I would like to ask you a question, I don't have either Apple or Garmin yet, but it is possible at least with the latter to set a goal (for example 12 minutes for 800 meters) and the watch helps you reach it by vibrating to increase your swimming speed and obtain the result? Thank you
There is a function for both time and length. You can set both (or just one). for example - 1000 meters - will vibrate EVERY 1000 meters. (1K, 2K, 3K etc), the same for time. if you set for 30 min. the watch vibrates at 30 min, 60 min etc. It's a nice feature, but as I've mentioned above, I don't "trust" my Swim2 to be accurate. Maybe other watches (more expensive?) can give you what you want.
I've been using the Garmin Swim 2 for 4 years and it records my lengths incorrectly every single time I use it (50m pool). Keeps telling me it's 100m when I change to back stroke, and then today it even recorded 100m for freestyle! How does it get it so wrong when it knows my speed per 100m? it makes no sense. I told Garmin and they were no help. Could you tell me how you use your Garmin? I hit the stop button after each length so it knows how many I have done. I don't let it keep going as I always have a little stop after each length anyway and if you slight move when paused the watch starts counting again.
I used to think it was wrong too but if you count in your head and then look at the end, you'll see that it actually tracks very well. It sometimes goes ahead and puts the next lap for you. Hence you seeing 100M instead of 50. Also, it sometimes counts an interval for you and doesn't tell you. Which is not ideal. But still, the distance is pretty accurate in my experience. I wish I was being paid to be such a fanboy 😅
@@dominiccx so... ? Garmin swim 2 sucks. Also I saw a download from an apple watch and it showed the different strokes - it knew when you were doing butterfly or freestyle. That's amazing! Garmin can't do that. But apple is so expensive. 😭
Your butterfly isn’t swam right. You have to bend your hips much more so that your butt gets almost out of the water :) Also, you shouldn’t get your head out the water that much for your neck health, your chin should touch the water when breathing. Love from France !
You fail to mention what I feel is the number 1 pro/con. Interoperability. While I do have some Apple products, I do NOT have an iphone. Using a Apple Watch isn't really even an option. Conversely Garmin is agnostic for pairing and syncing to a mobile device, they support iOS and Android both. Also, you can gain quite a few features in the various Garmin line moving from the Swim 2 to another model, even the low FR255 - especially important for multiple activities to track.
Right you are! What a nightmare it would be if you didn't own an iPhone with your apple watch.
I use FR245 and is fine for swimming
Thank you, right now i'm choosing a watch to track my swimming, and congrats at finding the watch at the water out there, really hard to do.
Thanks. As an update on the story, someone stole the apple watch from me. It's like the universe said "ah, you like the garmin, ok, so you don't need this apple watch, i'm gonna let someone else have it"
@@dominiccxhaha sorry to hear that
Thanks - I thought I was going crazy because no apple watch reviews for swimming ever seem to mention that it SUCKS in terms of accuracy and interface.
Forget about trying to time intervals...unless you love random numbers...
The Garmin Swim 2 is bullet proof in the water....but as you say...outside of the pool it's as hopeless and the apple watch is in the pool. 🤣
Roll on the Swim 3
Apple is a great watch but it is bad for swimming…it’s better garmin. I use swim1, fr920 and fenix3.
Garmin looks really cool to me
My Swim 2 fixed all the problems I was having with my Apple Watch. It’s simple, reliable and a whole lot less expensive than an Apple Watch.
Thanks for this video. Exactly the information I needed ✅🙏!
Glad it was helpful!
As a masters swimmer. This review is exactly opposite to what I have found over the years with AW now onto the ultra 2. I mean not being able to see how many metres you’ve done🤪🤪 are you not looking at the screen😂😂. It tracks every stoke possible, choice sets, drill types, even kick detection works perfectly. The other guys Garmin are constantly missing many metres, they don’t have kick set detection, the only Garmins that are ok for metretracking, are fenix pro or forerunner 935 is ok for swimming.
I might have not known how to set it up to see how many meters I had done. I had to contantly unlock it, unsuccessfully try to work it with my wet fingers to see where I was with my practice. This was the biggest negative for me with the AW.
You mean to say there was a setting i missed where I could have been able to keep my progress on screen at all times? 😅
Yes and even turn auto water lock off if you want, or set the side button and crown for pause, or use the crown button to navigate instead of wet fingers……
I’m often used as the metre counter, as the die hard no watch swimmers rely on memory of the sets but then forget the current total.
@@JohnHarryShaunhi, would you give us a better explanation to your last comment? Thanks
My last comment? Well the guys sometimes ask me how many metres have been swam. After a big set. As they don’t have any type of watch, as they are die hard pros who don’t use any watch. Just memory and pace clock.
The inaccuracy you mentioned was very surprising to me (apple watch).
I use a series 3 for swimming and it works pretty well. Over a km it doesn’t miss more than 1 lap.
In smaller pools (less than 25m) freestyle doesn’t track as well.
If I tap the screen it wakes up so I can see the data.
Pausing is also super easy.
My biggest issue is simply that it’s getting old and a bit slow.
So I’ve started looking at a new watch. Garmin is/was high up the list. I liked the idea of the forerunner, having extra features like walking and hiking.
I’ve been reading some reviews and people have been saying it’s not accurate (tracks more laps than you actually did), you shouldn’t push the buttons underwater apparently.
Since the swim is super specific these issues will probably not be present. The lack of other sports is a bit of a dealer breaker. The main reason I don’t want a new apple,watch is that I don’t wear it during the day anymore (I wear a regular watch) and also that it’s expensive.
Do you or does anyone in the comments have experience with the forerunner line for swimming?
You might have more experience with the apple watch and know it better than I got to.
Maybe someone here knows more about the forerunner.
This was really great. I stumbled across it when I was trying to find a video about which buttons to push on my swim2. I find it extremely difficult to use, having been an Apple Watch user for 6 years. However, I agree with you that the swim2 is terrific for swimming and, most importantly, it actually waterproof - unlike my Apple Watch 3. I got the swim2 because when I wore my Apple Watch in 2 m of water it stopped working. I thought I had ruined it and called Apple asking why they say it is waterproof (not resistant) to 10 meters. They had no answer and I gave up. The cool thing though is that when I left the Apple watch sitting on my bathroom counter for three days trying to decide what to do with it, It actually came back to life. But I think it’s pretty crappy of Apple to claim it is waterproof to a certain depth when it is not. I love my Garmin now that I have sort of figured out how to use it and I’m working on figuring out how to work all those buttons in the correct order to maximize my use of it. For the past two years, I’ve been OK with just knowing how to start and stop the swim tracker. You are very entertaining and I have subscribed just to listen to you talk about other topics.
Thank you Stephanie! Hope you enjoy the content.
Sometimes the Garmin2 does screw up the counting and I categorize it into 2:
1. When it counts a bit more than I swim and it's annoying
2. When it counts a bit less than I swim and it's unacceptable 😂
I completely agree with you. I have the Fenix 6 Pro for a long time and I'm very happy with it. I guess it is similar to the Garmin Swim 2. Do you know about it?
No, I have no experience with it.
Using the Swim2 I have to say it is NOT accurate at all. I don't know how apple does (I want to try..) but after years of using the Swim2 I always knew it's not accurate. you can't get 2 pools right.
@@MeitalBarSela Fenix 3 in the past and for the last 3 years the Fenix 6 are very accurate. Schia tova Meital!
@@JorgeRzezak if so it means buying apple watch isn't as expensive... These are basically the same price. Shavua tov.
@@MeitalBarSela I think Garmin is better sw when you are interested in sport, I swim in Herzlyia with former competitive swimming people and all of them have Garmin, anyhow Apple is the other good choice, the other watches are missing pools like Stunto
Excellent mate! Thanks! I will be looking at the Garmin 👍
Very good pros and cons comparison
Thank you!
Forgot to talk about battery life and how one is 1week and the other 1day.
How accurate are the auto sets on Garmin? I’m looking into switching from Apple Watch but I don’t want to push buttons for every new set. I just prefer to swim and forget about the watch.
In my experience they were better than those of the apple watch.
Depends on where you swim though.
If it's a pool, you have to put the pool measurements.
If it's open water, you have to wait until it syncs with the GPS.
I too have the Swim 2 and like its swimming metrics. My only problem with the watch is - like other Garmin watches - the battery. I have to re-charge it after every swim, which is at least three times a week. I bought a Coros Pace 2 as well, hoping its running metrics were equally good in the pool. It’s not. The Coros watch is way off. Great runner’s watch with a super battery, but it’s not good for swimming. An example is the pace. The Garmin will regularly show me swimming at a pace of 1.20, while the Coros will show me doing the same effort at 7.50 - which is way, way, wrong. So I end up having to re-charge the Garmin, but will,at least see metrics like my Swolf reading that makes sense.
I've had Garmin 2 for 2.5 years and I recharge it once a week or once every 5 days. I don't swim more than 4km/week though so i imagine the more you swim the more battery it needs.
Didn't know about Coros. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you very much for this video. It helped a lot.
A 30% and 50% accuracy rate essentially means the Apple watch shouldn't even be in this comparison video about swimming. I wonder also why the Garmin wouldn't be 100% on accuracy, especially in a pool swim where Garmin watches typically track your turns in a pool. Even my older (5 years) Garmin still accurately tracks my laps perfectly because I have set the distance ahead of time - 25 meters, 50 meters, etc. Why wouldn't this also be the case with the Swim 2? You never unpack where the inaccuracies come from, which is a miss in this video IMO.The only issue I could see is in open water where GPS could be dodgy. My hope is that the technology is better than it was before with my older Garmin, which admittedly had issues in accurately tracking my distances in some open water swims.
Good feedback. Thanks!
In my experience it's not 100% accurate in a pool. But very close to it.
You're right, I didn't cover where the inaccuracies come from. In the pool at least they come from it applying intervals without being the case.
Does this watch is good to running and working out at the gym too?
Yes, it does
The Apple Watch picks up my freestyle, but not backstroke, butterfly, or breaststroke. So frustrating!
Dang!
Dang!
Hi, I would like to ask you a question, I don't have either Apple or Garmin yet, but it is possible at least with the latter to set a goal (for example 12 minutes for 800 meters) and the watch helps you reach it by vibrating to increase your swimming speed and obtain the result? Thank you
Yes there is something like this on Garmin. I think it's called pacing. Haven't used it.
There is a function for both time and length. You can set both (or just one). for example - 1000 meters - will vibrate EVERY 1000 meters. (1K, 2K, 3K etc), the same for time. if you set for 30 min. the watch vibrates at 30 min, 60 min etc. It's a nice feature, but as I've mentioned above, I don't "trust" my Swim2 to be accurate. Maybe other watches (more expensive?) can give you what you want.
I swim threw summer and fall you think it would last?
I've had my garmin for over 2 years now and swim 3 times a week so I guess so.
I've been using the Garmin Swim 2 for 4 years and it records my lengths incorrectly every single time I use it (50m pool). Keeps telling me it's 100m when I change to back stroke, and then today it even recorded 100m for freestyle! How does it get it so wrong when it knows my speed per 100m? it makes no sense. I told Garmin and they were no help. Could you tell me how you use your Garmin? I hit the stop button after each length so it knows how many I have done. I don't let it keep going as I always have a little stop after each length anyway and if you slight move when paused the watch starts counting again.
I used to think it was wrong too but if you count in your head and then look at the end, you'll see that it actually tracks very well. It sometimes goes ahead and puts the next lap for you. Hence you seeing 100M instead of 50. Also, it sometimes counts an interval for you and doesn't tell you. Which is not ideal. But still, the distance is pretty accurate in my experience.
I wish I was being paid to be such a fanboy 😅
@@dominiccx Hahah mate, sincerely. Every single recording that's wrong is very wrong because I know factually I cannot swim that fast. 😆
@@riotgrrrl 😅
@@dominiccx so... ? Garmin swim 2 sucks. Also I saw a download from an apple watch and it showed the different strokes - it knew when you were doing butterfly or freestyle. That's amazing! Garmin can't do that. But apple is so expensive. 😭
Your butterfly isn’t swam right. You have to bend your hips much more so that your butt gets almost out of the water :) Also, you shouldn’t get your head out the water that much for your neck health, your chin should touch the water when breathing. Love from France !
hes not a real swimmer. he didnt even talk about the differences in the two watches from a swimming prescriptive. such a mediocre video.
You talk nonsense. You don't even actually have an Apple watch
You caught me! I am just bothered I can't afford an apple watch so I talk shit about it. EXPOSED!