It's bulky, noticeable in the pool if you're not use to swimming with one on. However, it's pretty cool for checking out splits and all that fun stuff. When I do my testing I wear it just so I have the data recorded. I also wear it when I do open water swims.

Thanks for the feedback. The bulk is my biggest concern. I quit swimming with the watch a few years ago when I figured out it was easy to keep track of my splits on the deck clock. Whenever I wear one now, I always feel like its slowing me down. I'm guessing that's probably mental. This thing seems kinda cool though. So does it have a sat capability outdoors for open water?

No GPS, so won't give you that data.

Check out Ray's review here: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/...in-depth-review.html

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- John
"Have courage, and be kind."

Check out Rays review and pics. The Garmin Swim is the LEAST bulky of any of the swim capable watches.

I think you're thinking of the FR910XT.

The Garmin Swim is a different unit. In fact, I'd guess (off hand), it's the slimmest watch Garmin has ever made.

Though, as noted, it only does pool swimming (plus usual date/time/alarm watch functions). No GPS means no outdoor swimming, since it uses an accelerometer to measure distance in the pool.

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My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com

Maybe if you are a 10 year old girl :-)
Anything but bulky. 310 is bulky. The swim is not.
I like mine, a lot.

Two thumbs up on the Swim. Kinda a Speedo and goggles type myself and this device isn't the least bit bulky. As a DC Rainmaker loyal follower I purchased the Swim after reading his review. Nice for any pool workout but especially the longer sets. Far from a data geek but I have also enjoyed reviewing my swims in GC. The Drill Log feature is nice and I have not experienced a single accuracy issue that wasn't user (me!) induced!

Bought one and returned it, screen unreadable due to fogging.

I got one after reading DC Rainmaker's review as well...Not bulky at all and very useful for lap swimming since I would always lose count of how many laps I had done.

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Matthew

http://mattpatt75.blogspot.com

Got mine this week, compared to my 319 not bulky at all
Keeps track of distance really good, did add 25 on Monday for no reason

My bad. I thought he was referring to the 910xt. I wasn't aware there is a Garmin "Swim"....doh

I got one last also but only have one swim with it so far. I also have a Swimsense and that worked just fine also. I'm switching the Garmin Swim so I can get ride of the Finis cradle and just use the Ant stick to upload. Its more of a convenience thing then performance.

I've been swimming with the Garmin Swim for 3 months. Having a lot of accuracy problems in the past 2 months. Is typically accurate until I hit the 1/2 mile mark in the pool. Then, starts losing track of swim lengths. Is usually 75-100 meters short for every mile I swim in the pool.

Thanks everyone for the replies. Sounds like the concensus is that its not bulky but some are experiencing accuracy issues. The difference between a good day and a bad day on a long swim (5k or so) is less than a minute. If this thing misses laps, that's not any more accurate than keeping track via the clock. Seems like its better suited for intervals or shorter sets.

The other thing I wanted to use it for was counting strokes. That way I can go back and see where I start to deteriorate during a long swim. I guess it would likely still work for that.

Like I stated above, I've only used it once thus far but have a couple hundred miles worth of swimming with a Swimsense. I've found that when the watch screws up and misses a length, its pretty much something I did wrong. I've read before that a strong push off the wall is important and I think that in longer sets its easy to push off a little light due to fatigue. I've also messed up the length if I glide too much as it also uses no moving time to indicate a turn.

Your interval time will still be accurate so you should be able to tell if the lap count is off and can be corrected, at least in SportTracks anyway.

modified to fix my dislexia

Have one, love it more every time I use it. Like the split info, average / 100m & stroke count. No accuracy issues other than user caused.

I read dcrainmakers review and bought one today. cant wait to give it a try!!

I have been wishing a product like this existed, unfortunately I now must have one.

I swim with the Garmin 910XT for every swim workout and love it. Is it a touch bulky? Yes, but you forget about it after a while. Are there a few quirks? Yes, the 910xt does not record kick intervals at all, it can record some weird things during drill sets, and it does tend to miss turns on some sprint sets. Overall though I and may coach love to have the hard data that isn't effected by my warped memory during Vo2 max intervals and distance verification on the longer boring distance intervals where my mind tends to wander. I've heard good things about the Garmin Swim though primarily from DCRainmakers website and would love to try it out to see if it corrects some of the issues I have. Good Luck.

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http://www.marcusstromberg.com

I love mine and it is not bulky. Probably one of garmin best looking watches. It is good in the pool only and very easy to use.

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SmartBikeTrainers.com || YouTube || My Twitter

I found the same when I had the 910XT - I actually ended up returning it as I had one that shut down on the bike all the time, and went back to the Polar RCX5. After a few races including a 70.3 I've come to the conclusion that the RCX5 rocks for training and absolutely sucks for racing. The grass is always greener!! Now prepping for IM Wales this year and planning on a Garmin Swim (even though my local pool opening hours are a joke). Going to revisit the DCRainmaker review now.

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It's ok.
Counts laps accurately if you swim normally.
Some of my sets (LCM) include 50m as 25 very hard/25 easy. The garmin swim counts this as 2 laps (100m).
Garmin connect website is nearly useless - you can export the information as a CSV file and manipulate it from there but who wants to do that.

It's a typical Garmin product:
Good idea,
Good hardware execution
questionable firmware
terrible software
and amazingly ... no competition!

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My Blog

There is competition - the Swimsense (which I also had for a while) actually wasn't bad. The display sucked and the cradle and upload system were weird but other than that it wasn't bad. The Garmin Swim's main appeal to me is the lack of need for a charging cradle, and Garmin Connect which i I actually quite like (although I'm moving to TP this year). The display on the Swim also looks quite decent.

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I've had one for quite awhile now. I gave up on the SwimSense as it had a lot of quality control problems particularly with the bridge unit in uploading to a computer.

It is not bulky as has been stated, it's the size of a small watch. No gps so it will not work for open water swims. Also it is somewhat less configurable than the swimsense. You'll be more or less stuck with the stock displays (that's not quite accurate but close enough). With those caveats, I far prefer it to the swim sense. For starters I can read it with my aging eyes and it's a lot easier to operate imo.

DC RainMaker had a review of it awhile back as well: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/...in-depth-review.html