Poolmate2

070716 Update: I've been using this to swim for a few months now. I'm still not thrilled about the replaceable battery cap on the back. Another thing I've noticed is that the start button is easy to hit if you have the watch in a bag. I have discovered this a couple of times, once it appeared the watch had been on record mode for over a day. It didn't save anything, but the button is easy to depress by accident. I still find the watch very useful and accurate. The reminder alarm is great!It's nice to have the alarm remind me when I hit a specific yardage. The watch is big, in my opinion; more so tall/thick than big around. I find it's not comfortable enough to wear all day. The replaceable battery cap sticks out and tends to dig into my wrist, and the watch is heavy (I'm not used to wearing a watch anymore). I have attached photos for reference. For counting laps/yards in the pool, so far it is working great. The display is nice and large, and it does have a back light, but you really don't need to look at it while actually swimming. Read the manual to learn the buttons, I find that they are not completely stand alone/intuitive from past fitness watches I was familiar with. I accidentally deleted all of my logs (only three) pushing the wrong buttons. Also keep in mind that the watch needs to be out of the water when you push buttons. Not a huge inconvenience, but a need to learn behavior. As others have mentioned, the watch band is part of the watch body, so I hope that doesn't wear out as it can't be replaced. I was debating between this and the garmin swim watch. I had a bad experience with garmin's ant+ connectivity, so I opted for the swimovate watch as it was a little less money. I was disappointed when I realized the upload cable was extra. I'm more of a casual swimmer these days and don't want to analyze a bunch of data anymore, so I'm ok with a device that simply helps me keep track of my laps.

I am training for a 6K open water event this summer, so I do long distances non-stop in the pool. I would often find myself unsure of what lap I'm on and was tired of trying to meticulously count my laps. Unfortunately the Garmin Swim watches with GPS were out of my budget so I turned to this watch.I was prepared for the watch to be bulky. The first day or two of wearing it, it was a little uncomfortable but I quickly got use to it and don't notice it is there.Learning to navigate the watch does take some getting to use to, however it didn't take long for me to figure out to do the things that I wanted from the watch. There are a lot of metrics that I don't use and would take longer to learn but not impossible.The vibration feature is very nice and one of the biggest selling points of the watch.As far as accuracy - it counts my laps correctly about 80% of the time. I can tell when it hasn't because it is always off by one lap so it goes off on the opposite end of the pool. So far I haven't thought it was off more then the one lap, even with my long swims.The most annoying thing I have found is it doesn't work if I pause in the middle of a set. In other words if I set it for 500 yards then have to pause it at 100 yds to adjust my goggles it doesn't unpause correctly. I don't know if this is user error or a design defect(so far I have been too lazy to dig out the instructions to figure it out).I think it is a reasonable quality for the price and it is still better then having to completely depend on counting laps.

I purchased this watch in December 2015 as a gift. I swim in a 50 meter pool. This watch has NEVER given me an accurate count. I swim 50 meters up and swim 50 meters back. The watch should say 2 laps. Perfect. I swim 50 meters up and before I get to the end the watch vibrates and says I've done 4 laps. I turn to do to go back and by the time I get ck the watch says 6 laps when in reality it should say 4. I wrote to the company back in March 2016 in the UK and got this lame answer."The watch works by sensing the regular motions your arm makes each time you take a stroke. Once you have taken a 6 or 7 strokes (on the arm you are wearing it on) it knows you are swimming. It then looks for a longer gap than normal between the strokes- this is what happens at the end of a lap and is how it senses the change of lap.If you have inaccuracies first check the watch is set to the correct hand that you are wearing it on. You can see this from the SETUP menu (Press mode until you see SETUP, press start. Press mode until you see LEFT or RIGHT HAND. Use the up button to change the value then hold the start button for a couple of seconds to exit).If the watch counts slightly more laps than it should then concentrate on keeping a regular stroke pattern through the lap, it could have sensed an interruption in your arm rhythm which it thought was a change of lap. Some people find one arm gives better results than the other so experiment by setting the watch to the other arm and trying on this arm instead."Yes I know I should have spoke sooner but I keep re doing the setup thinking I did something wrong. I swam yesterday a total of 32 50 meter laps or 1600 meters. The F$#King watch said I did 54 50 meters or 2,700 meters. I wrote back to the company again and they in return said this."I am sorry you haven't had very good success with the watch. It has been programmed to work with the vast majority of swimmers but unfortunately there are a very small number that fall outside this and have less accurate results.I appreciate you have had the watch a while and tried the suggestions we made."It's too late for me to return the watch to AMAZON so Caveat Emptor!!! The only good thing about this watch, it keeps okay time other than that find another watch.

All as expected.

Previously I had the Poolmate Pro watch and wasn't particularly impressed with it - it regularly failed to accurately count laps, the watch lost time weekly, the button layout and operation wasn't particularly intuitive, and it looked a bit naff. I ended up buying the Garmin swim watch and it has been absolutely brilliant. It needs a new strap which is what got me looking on the internet and just happened to see this new watch. I really liked the idea of the vibrate feature so thought I’d take a chance – the reviews all sounded good – and thought they’d probably ironed out all the little things that annoyed me before. At first I was hopeful as it looks fantastic and has a nice weight to it, but that for me is the end of the positives I'm afraid. The buttons are way to sensitive. The start and stop button are the same and to stop it you have to hold the button for a couple of seconds which can prove a little fiddly. However, these are minor niggles, and I'd happily overlook them if the watch performed well in the main areas that I bought it for, but unfortunately this was not the case; the vibrate feature is basically useless - the vibration is so faint that you can't feel it when swimming. I set it to go off every 10 lengths - I missed it completely the first time, so after that I kept count and really concentrated and could just about feel it. I tried the pace feature and set it to go off every 30 seconds and in 16 lengths I didn't feel the thing once, and to make matters worse the watch told me I'd swam 20 lengths! I was really excited about this product, but sadly it proved to be a complete let-down. I've decided to return this watch, buy a new strap for my Garmin, and wait for Garmin to make a watch with a vibrate feature - I guarantee it will be better than Swimovate's offering!

Cuenta las vueltas perfectamente, la vibración es muy útil. Se debería mejorar la visualización de la pantalla, no se ve bien y no estaría mal que se acompañará guía de uso en español.

It stopped counting laps after the 5th lap. The bracelet broke first time it was used. Very disappointed.

This watch is easy to see at a glance and is very user friendly. I have tested it over several kilometers so far and found it to be very accurate when counting the laps. However this was not the case when my husband borrowed it. This inaccuracy turned out not to be the watch's fault bit my husband's technique. When turning in the pool he was lifting his watch arm up before setting off which tricked the watch into thinking that it was a rotation/stroke. When I set off for a new lap I always lead with the watch arm which gives the pause required. The only downside with this watch is that I cannot feel when the alarm vibrates telling me when I have completed X amount of laps which is disappointing when this was actually the reason why I chose it over others. It does actually vibrate but ever so gently so if you are swimming it can't be felt. Therefore as a straight forward swim watch, I am pleased with this purchase, but for the vibration alert, a disappointment.