I just bought a vivosmart with the knowledge that it does not do swim metrics, but in a discussion with support at Garmin, I got the impression that when swimming, it would record an appropriate effort. It does not. I did 4 timed activities yesterday of 1km each. The first one showed on the watch that I had not even gone .1km. Same with the second. The third one showed .2km, I think, and the 4th showed .3km. OK, I realize that the watch cannot differentiate movement types so I went to Connect, and set the activity as a Lap Swim type activity. That changed neither the calories spent (about 80 calories in 80 minutes of 4km swimming? Not likely). So then I assumed that maybe the watch and Connect just figure I will only walk or run, so I reset the stride for running to convert what the watch counted as steps into proper distance, but that changed nothing. So I set the activity type to Running and that also did not change anything.
My suggestion is this:
- keep the watch as it is, and have it count whatever it does for swim strokes
- In Garmin Connect, allow a "stride"-type setting for swimming, where I can say how many of these "swim steps" equals 100 meters
- Converted those "swim steps" into an equivalent "step" value and adjust the graphs and achievements for the day accordingly.
- This means that if I swim 4000 meters and it records 44 strokes per 100 meters = 1,760 strokes (one arm only is recorded, I know that) then it might convert that and show 3,520 steps for that activity (that would be a very low conversion ratio) or better yet 5,280 (maybe more reasonable conversion) or what I have seen as the conversion ratio yesterday it should show about 17,600 steps. The conversion might be driven by the amount of time spent for the activity - 1km in 18 minutes is very different than 1km in an hour particularly for calorie consumption but also total effort. What I would love to see is the equivalent walking steps that I would have had to do to equal that amount of swimming.
- Then recalculate the calories based on that total output
Ultimately, this would cause the "steps" for a swimmer to be "equivalent steps" and the calories to be more accurately represented, when they identify a timed activity as a swimming type activity.
I bought the watch to track my total output on a daily basis, and right now the swimming is recording at about 1/10 the true output, so it hardly shows when I swim 4km. That is not working for me at all.
As an example, on the first full day I wore the watch, I recorded 8,004 steps. According to my prior $29 watch as a comparison, that was about right. I went for a walk in a park, ambled aimlessly through a large hospital looking for the right department, cut the lawn, and other general walking. On day 2, i recorded only 3,643 steps. Again, according to the $29 watch, that was accurate for steps while walking on land. But the $29 watch doesn't live well in the water. I also swam 4km in 80 minutes. I had the Vivosmart on, and did 4 timed activities of about 1km each. I was expecting to blow away day 1 with that output. I can only say that I was disappointed with the reports of what appeared to be my demise as I seem to have barely moved in the water. If the Vivosmart doesn't show anything different at the end of the day with 4km of swimming as compared to the $29 walking-only watch, I am thinking I should go back to the walking-only watch.
Thx for listening.