Extremely inaccurate swimming pool tracking by epix gen 2

Read these tips:

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=iS2KcmGiVb4djrE1lri8i7

Thanks for the link, but I have a situation where much cheaper watches provide way better measurements, so it's not up to my swimming style or the way I do the exercises.

Am I missing something in the swimming routine settings? Maybe it's autorest? OK, I will try that and see how it will work out this Saturday.

But in general it doesn't change my message - in case of huawei I have flawless experience out of the box. In case of garmin I'm not. There are tons of settings in the watches, without external assistance it's very hard to understand meaning and effect of each of them - why optimal are not set as default? And even in this case the big question is whether it will help in the end. 

maxLufter said:

I have a situation where much cheaper watches provide way better measurements, so it's not up to my swimming style or the way I do the exercises.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My point was that a garmin watch requires you to do the swimming in a particular way, whether you like it or not, and there is nothing else you can do, apart from following the recommendations or moving to another brand.

maxLufter said:

Maybe it's autorest?

Autorest won't help you in this case, and can actually make things worse.

maxLufter said:

There are tons of settings in the watches

But only very few which are relevant to pool swimming.

maxLufter said:

why optimal are not set as default?

I think they are, within limitations of what a garmin watch can do. It's not the specific settings that are the issue here.

maxLufter said:

And even in this case the big question is whether it will help in the end. 

No, not in your case. If you can't or don't want to adapt to garmin's recommendations for swimming, then there is no setting that can help you.

I want to emphasize once again - I did very basic 25m freestyle stroke and garmin recorded it as 50. I'm not going to argue with you here as another user who accepted this. But rather want garmin developers to pay attention to it - something is definitely wrong with the algorithms. 

Yes, I get it. I really do. If you think I put the blame on you as a user, then you misunderstood my message completely. I was merely stating the current state of matters. Expecting garmin to make significant changes in this area is very far fetched, so waiting for it to happen is not a practical solution. As I see it, you can do two things only: Adapt to garmin's recommendations or switch to another brand of swimming watches.

Again, thank you for your reply.

Seems like you had quite some experience with garmin, and if the solution is "adapt" (which is something quite abstract tbh, of course I want to swim with better technique, but not the one to somehow adapt to garmin's algos - they should be doing it rather) or "leave", the second option may be better.

Let's see if we can have more opinions. 

maxLufter said:

Seems like you had quite some experience with garmin

I've been using garmin devices since 2010. My first garmin with pool swim capability was the FR735XT in 2017.

Garmin was one of the first (if not the very first) sports watch manufacturers that offered automated pool swim mode. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the first garmin with a pool swimming mode was the Forerunner 910XT somewhere around 2011. Back then it was targeted mostly at competitive swimmers. If you add to that technological limitations of that era (watches had fewer sensors and much less computing power), then one can understand why garmin's pool swimming mode had its limitations. Since then there were very few improvements to how the pool swimming mode works in a garmin, and the core principle remains the same. So one could say that current limitations of garmin's pool swim mode are of historical nature, I suppose. Just my historical interpretation of things.

maxLufter said:

if the solution is "adapt"

I am not a competitive swimmer, although I do my best to follow the way of simming of competitive swimmers. As such, I was more adapting to how competitive swimmers do their magic, than adapting to what garmin expects me to do. And it turned out that over the years I had very few issues with pool swimming accuracy.

on 9.37 and was swimming this weekend and had no issues with lap count except for one interval session where it over counted by 1 lap as ran into a much slower swimmer (I don't know why people can't stick to the correct lane based on the appropriate lane speed) and effectively had to stop dead in the water.

I would also say that most of your issues seem more down to you and not down to the watch itself, and I think that you can improve your results by doing the following:

To get accurate lane counting its important to make sure you do a strong push off, and do not coast into the wall - swim to it. In regards to style as long as you aren't heavily slapping the water you should ok on lap distance, it might not just record the correct stroke. 

Do not use auto-rest as very tricky to use (I know you aren't, but am saying this as you are thinking of using it) - can't coast in, and need to stay very still once wall is reached until it triggers auto-rest - if you don't it doesn't start rest; and then any aggressive movements can trigger the next interval. So would really suggest not using this option - I have tried and find it too much effort, instead when you want to rest press the lap button - that will then trigger your rest screen - once that is triggered you can then move around tread water etc, and when ready to go again press lap button again to trigger next interval session. But would really recommend pressing start button and resume later if going to be a long rest (or you are going to wander around the pool/ tread water etc which it sounds like you were doing based on what you wrote, as doing that will definitely cause lap distances to be wrong, If you want to track play time/water cardio/water polo etc - then take the open water activity and copy it and then set it up so GPS is turned off. To put them together in one session use the multisport option by creating one and or use a hotikey combo set to "Change Sport" so you can swop between the activities you want to use.

Only use lap button to record intervals.

Note: Based on some of your SWOLF its suggests that your swim pace per 25m is often slower than 45s (but coudl be wrong here - struggling to decode you language) - if that is the case it can trigger additional lengths. In which case would suggest using the drill option instead until you can get your speed up enough to accurately count laps / or just edit your distance in the app/web post activity.

To see individual laps - you can see them on the watch post activity session or you can see them on the connect website. For some reason Garmin doesn't have this on the app itself (can I also suggest you raise a feature request for this like I and others have done - the more of us that request it, its more likely we will get it at some point), it only shows inteval details. When in interval tab move phone into landscape mode to see more detail.

I swim everyday with my Epix, and I am generally very satisfied with its accuracy. Whether I am doing long swims, drills or intervals, it seems really accurate and usually matches what I count. My wife swims with me using a 255s, and when we do the same sessions our watches are reporting the exact same distance.

Fully agree, the auto-rest can be a source of errors. Sometimes I stretch my arms during the rest and it is enough to trigger a new lap. Manual rest is handy.