Swimming watch recommendations for tracking pool lengths and distance

[MissElizabethGrayling]

I’ve been swimming quite a bit lately, for fitness, and always lose count of lengths done, plus all the pools I go to (I mix it up) are different lengths. I would like a watch that can measure distance swam and various fitness things but that only wear for swimming, so no point wasting money on one that measures my sleep and normal heart rate etc. any recommendations? (I swim less than a mile each time so we’re not talking elite athlete or anything).

I used to have a Speedo watch, long before smartwatches were a thing. It was bloody useless.
I doubt there is much of a market for single sport watches now, it’s all likely to be wrapped up into Apple or Garmin for example. Just be aware that if you do a lot of kick, nothing gets picked up on the watch

I’ve got a Garmin Vivoactive 5 which I found to be pretty accurate when I used to go swimming but I’m pretty sure you have to set it up with the length of the pool so it may be no good if you use different pool lengths, although it does have an open swimming activity type so that might work?
It is a smart watch though so does all of the other monitoring activities that you say you don’t want so might not be what you’re looking for.

My Garmin Forerunner 255 has swimming functions that work out laps and stats.

I haven't heard of watches that exclusively cover swimming.

The Garnin is better than the stich counter I was using 20 years ago!

Definitely NOT a fitbit - they die very quickly, despite being made for swimming.
I do alphabet games for lengths - eg girls names, positive words, christmas words, you get the drift. Key to this is repeating the word for the whole length. Get to z and start a new one. Actually very good for mindfulness, and you never loose hiyour count. Obviously you need to know youe pool length to work out your distance.
I'm not sacrificing anymore watches.

I’ve got an Amazon fitness watch (Amazfit Active 2) and I’ve used it in the pool a couple of times - it seems fairly accurate and you don’t have to set the pool length. It also automatically picks up which stroke you use. It’s my first fitness watch so nothing else to compare to but it’s quite cheap and I’ve been impressed so far (had it since Dec 2025).

I have an Apple Watch and is good for tracking swimming etc.

I had Swimovate (poolmate), it was not accurate enough for me.
SwimTag if it still exists anywhere was the best.

Swimtag still exists @lljkk my gym has them. I’m not sure if you can buy them for personal use though? The gym has a rack of them and you sign them out against your membership card then it syncs your swim to your account. It’s pretty good but doesn’t always pick up strokes and lengths if you’re doing drills.

Garmin Vivoactive - I have one and it automatically tracks laps and length.

I used to have a Garmin Swim, you might be able to pick one up secondhand. It worked really well. I now have a garmin fenix multisports watch.

I have a Fitbit Inspire 3, it's surprisingly good - I compared the length count, swim time etc with watching the pool clock and it was spot on. I've had it nearly a year of swimming regularly and it still works. It was only about £60 so a low cost way to try a watch for this reason.

It's not an individual product one can use, it is a pool level system, there are sensors at each end that pick up the SwimTag signal, so the system has to installed for whole pool. I've been to 2 pools that let SwimTag membership lapse. Presumably decision made it was not value for money, boohoo.

that's a shame @lljkk i know they were talking about making them for individual use years ago (one of our gym managers went to work for them!) but it mustn't have got off the ground. I use my Garmin watch as it shows the number of lengths which swimtag doesn't, and then that syncs to my swimtag app. But i used it when I had an older garmin that didn't have a swim function.

This is so helpful, thank you

FORM smart goggle may be worth a look. My eldest got a pair when they first came out and he was swimming competitively and they were used for while, but a couple of the other swimmers took the mick and then he switched to Waterpolo, so they’re in a drawer somewhere now.