Watch Recommendations - Open Water Swimming

[Hexbug]

Has anyone got any recommendations for a watch / fitness tracker to use primarily for open water swimming please.

I currently have a Garmin Vivoactive4 which is great for everything else but, unless I've missed something, seems to be fairly useless for swimming. I use it on 'Walk' but the GPS tracking is all over the place and after an hour of swimming it helpfully tells me that I've only done 100m.

Would appreciate any recommendations or advice. I'm still fairly new to this so would prefer not to spend £££ on top-level tech but would like to find a way to track swims in terms of route, time, distance, weather conditions etc,

Just bumping in case anyone has any recommendations please.

I have a coros pace and it’s great! Can’t compare though as it’s my 1st watch.

I just use the swimming setting on Strava on my phone. I put it in my dry bag in my tow float. I know it’s not a watch but it’s an inexpensive way to track what you are doing. Enjoy!

I used to share lanes sessions with Channel swimmers who were indoors for the winter. They all had different tracker watches, so no consensus among them what was best AND although they swam as a 6 person unit, their watches all gave different numbers for length counts at end of session (they said).

Ideally your pool has swimmate (mine doesn't any more, either).
I had Swimovate watch and wasn't happy with how wrong it was.
there's some advice here.

I don't recommend fitbit. My "waterproof" one flooded and died the first time I went swimming with it. Appreciate it could have been defective and others may be fine.

I started off with a Garmin 735XT which is about the least you can spend, imo, for decent gps tracking in the open water. It lasted me about 7 years, with a couple of trips back to the manufacturer under warranty. I now have a Fenix 7s which I love love love. As well as excellent pool and ows functions it tracks fitness sleep etc with lots of interesting insights. I do find them very biased towards running and cycling but having a sports watch like this definitely makes me want to do more, and so worth the investment even if you are only just starting out with open water.

Thank you all, I’ll have a look at some of these and report back. I’m in awe of you sharing lanes with proper Channel swimmers @lljkk😀.

I use the Garmin Swim 2. It's good but not perfect - you have to add drill and kick manually. For the price, it's pretty good though.

GPS doesn't work underwater so if you swim freestyle and have the watch on your wrist, the track will be erratic. I have a Suunto and I strap it to my tow float.

I use my Apple Watch.
It doesn’t pick up breaststroke.
better but not guaranteed to pick up gps when doing freestyle, but I make sure to stop and have my hands above the water before turning round.