open water

My best and very serious recommendation is to wear the watch on your OTHER wrist!

After lots of testing, configuring, many frustrated hours I found that for me the solution is to wear the watch on my right wrist. On the right, I get always perfect measurement, perfect track, and I am very happy now with my watch. On the left wrist... it sucks completely, I have constant GPS loss. Sometimes I try, if something changed (I mean my stroke style), but no matter what I do, on the right perfect, on the left a disaster.

And I have a symmetrical freestyle stroke... My old FR910XT is always perfect on any side. Since I gained confidence that on the right side the Swim2 is perfect, I leave the good old 910XT at home. 

Next time I will try to test with different positions - watch on the right upside down, watch on the left upside down. I want to catch a combination where the watch starts to record normally on the left side. That would be a perfect proof for Garmin that they have something wrong either on HW or SW. Until that anyone can tell me that my swim style is wrong. The difference between the two sides is so apparent that I am sure that the problem is on the Garmin side, but demonstration needs to come from me unfortunately.

The equator thing is just a bug in the Garmin Connect Web. They can not read their fit file correctly... But the data is there, nothing is lost, the measurement is correct.

About Garmin recommending to tie the watch on a floating device - this is a joke, people buy a swimming WATCH to wear it on the wrist during swimming.

Battery life is ok, considering that the HW is the most basic model of the Garmin line (FR45).

Instinct is a different animal, it has much worse OW tracking capabilities, but at least that has a good old proven calculating software, so it works always but with some limitations.

My first OW swim with the watch didn't record properly and went 1k over distance and on a wild course. Since, then it's been spot on with the reason being (I think) is not holding your watch arm underwater when stopping and treading water. This seems to lose the GPS connection which stands to reason and has been mentioned elsewhere. I now hold my watch arm out of the water and all good. I also agree that wearing on the right arm seems to work better than the left, particularly for pool swims and stroke detection. I'm really loving the watch. Yes, it won't be 100% perfect, particularly in the pool but the GPS works great for OPS swims and runs.

Thanks for your helpful comments. I wear it on my right arm. Not used it in the pool yet they are all closed here for covid, but I mainly swim all year round skins OW anyway. I understand the issues with keeping it out of the water to retain signal. Still not convinced, but glad yours is working well. This doesn't explain why metrics can be double the map plot or don't match the map plot which I guess might be a 'Connect' problem not the watch? 

Thanks for this PG, yes I agree the 'equator' thing is probably a 'Connect' problem, but I've had it with three our of last few swims. So far, no suggestions, input or guidance on how to solve it from Garmin after they asked for my plots to be sent to them. Unlike you I don't have a balanced stroke (a broken arm as a child prevents that) and I always wear on my dominant right arm. The 'instinct' is not such a capable watch I agree, but has other merits and gives good out of water tracking on the tow float, but never once on my arm. This aside, my main and overriding issue is that Garmin have produced a product, well many products, which through 'Connect' can present data to an incredible level of accuracy, but it's all USELESS or at best a 'rough guide' if the source data from the watch cannot be reliably recorded every time you swim. If this is simply a limitation of current technology then go back to basics and design a specific product so it will. For information, I have reported issues to Garmin in the past with my first SWIM 1 watch, years ago. I was impressed with the product. The pool metrics were great, very clever recording of stroke etc UNTIL another swimmer catches your arm as they pass or you knock a lane divide with your arm. The watch quite rightly thinks thats the end of the lap and then the data for the whole swim becomes corrupted and worthless. I suggested Gamin to add an 'adjust' function in 'Connect' so that once the date is downloaded we have the option to remove the erroneous laps to make the swim date more accurate, they are easy to spot. Without that edit function, everything other than 'swim time' is inaccurate.  I am not a whinger, despite my complaints here, I just think that unless real users report back on products, the developers won't know to fix and improve them especially if they aren't swimmers themselves. Hope you agree. 

For pool correction, the best tool is

http://www.swimmingwatchtools.com/

Of course it is not from Garmin...

I agree, that this business model, that releasing half developed products, and letting the users make all the beta testing is a mess. But this is not uncommon these days, you can see it from many different companies with many different products.

Unfortunately lots of people like this kind of business model, take a look at the FR945 discussion. While FR945 has still lots of bugs left, people are excited to buy the new FR955 in the future to face even more bugs whenever it comes out...

PG, thanks for your detailed response and informing us about your troubleshooting methodology.

One question about the left wrist/right wrist issue - do you breathe on your right side?

No, interestingly I breathe bilaterally, and I try to swim as symmetrical as I can. However my dominant breathing side is to the right, so I might be asymmetrical some way.

Thanks for the quick reply. It might be correlated to dominant side breathing, but I doubt the time each wrist is above water and able to communicate to the GPS satellites is significantly different.

PG, you have more experience with Garmin watches and these forums than I, does someone from Garmin monitor these posts? Do we know if it is a HW or SW issue 1 year after your original post

Hmmm, my answer was flagged for some reason.

So in short, Garmin do not monitor this forum, sometimes they make a quick check. But bugs and other issues should be reported via their support center.

Noone confirmed the left/right wrist difference as a bug. As it works for me perfectly on the right, I consider it as a weird "feature", either on my side or at Garmin.