My wife is looking for something to track her swims ,ideally and one that she can use with strava and not too expensive.So has anyone got any recommendations.Thanks in advance Ed

Ok – a slight tangential idea but IMO the best swimming trackers simple provide stroke per minute timings and legnth pacing timings.

Two options – the wetronome or the tempo trainer, although I think its hard to find wetronomes these days

Finis Tempo Trainer Pro

Simplest and best swimming aids on the market

More closely related to your question !! the garmin vivoactive

Garmin Fenix 3, does both pool and open water.

Garmin Vivoactive does swimming (caveat: i haven’t used it, but the option’s there)

My vivoactive is ok in the pool but not always accurate bizarrely. Hevnt tried it in OW yet

But i prefer swimming to the simple ticking of the TT above!!

I looked into this myself recently as I often get distracted and forget my length count; it seems that there’s nothing that’s universally recommended as being accurate. For example the Swimmo shows some promise but hasn’t yet been delivered, the Misfit Speedo shine is cheap but lacks a display so no use for counting lengths, the Garmin and Tomtom ones seem to be poor at length counting (apart from the Garmin Swim which is looking a bit old). My conclusion was that this is a technology that’s not quite there yet and therefore not one to spend money on at the moment. I’ll be interested to hear what others recommend.

The bragi dash headphones are marketed as designed to be swum with and certainly getting them wet does no harm. They have a fitness/HR function that might be worth looking at, not the cheap option but you’d get a ton of other functions and tunes while you swim.

RIO – Mrs THM bought me a vivoactive. I have been v impressed with running/cycling and golf functionality although battery life could be better. But the swim function has been odd. Its basic function is a combination of lengths, stroked per length and times. In theory all interesting stuff and I do like swim golf training. However, so far the recording has been patchy, so I have stopped using it in the pool.

THM – from what I’ve read the Tomtom Spark/Runner 2 has similar issues. I suspect they may be fixable through improved software (after all the Garmin Swim seems to manage ok) but I don’t have confidence that updates will be delivered before the devices get superseded (see e.g. Tomtom Runner replacement with Spark/Runner 2) hence my current reluctance to invest!

It’s worth checking the DC Rainmaker site as he’s reviewed all the main options.

I looked recently as my daughter is showing promise as a swimmer, Garmin swim seemed to be the most popular but I’m no expert.

Garmin 910XT (which is quite old now) works fine for indoor and outdoor. Tracks lengths done, strokes, stroke rate, stroke type and a load of other things probably. Once outdoors, it tracks distance using GPS, indoors it uses accelerometers to detect the end of a length (you tell it how long the pool is, in order for it to work out how far you’ve gone).

My vivoactive seems to add extra lengths when doing freestyle, and slightly less lengths when doing breast stroke. I just swim for core work, so I’m not massively bothered, but gives me an idea when I have done 40. I think it is normally max 2 lengths out. That might be very annoying for more dedicated swimmers though. It does look like the software etc has been greatly improved in the new HR version though, so this may have been improved.

+1 for Garmin swim I have been using it for about 2 years now and I am very happy with it. The two things to be aware of that the stroke rate is single arm and the length count require a good push off the wall to activate it:

Common reasons for a miss count include:

1. waiting at the wall to long between lengths (there is a pause feature for this)
2. Moving down the wall before starting your next length
3. Having to change stroke mid length because the swimmer you were about to overtake has decided to veer across the lane
4. Having to change stroke because the swimmer in front of you has decided to swim the second half of their length along the bottom of the pool and you are unsure of the etiquette.

Anybody using Swimovate ? http://www.swimovate.com/

The basic one lacks option to download to PC which I’d like but looks like PoolMateLive (with download clip) solves that.

Otherwise GarminSwim looking best to me.

I have a swimovate but it’s a bit hit and miss on the accuracy when counting lengths.

I had a look at Swimovate when i got my Garmin swim but the reviews were not great back then.
Personally I like being able to review the data on pace and stroke rate on a computer. Other plus points for the Garmin: you can link it to your strava via the Garmin website and you can export your swim data to excel.