KIT ZONE

GARMIN SWIM 2

£219.99 Is the long-awaited Swim 2 worth the wait for triathletes?

Garmin’s original Swim watch was launched back in 2012, and finally eight years later they’ve introduced a far more advanced sequel. Our previous review of the Swim 1 lamented the basic feature list – the lack of GPS or open-water swim mode – and this is an issue that the Swim 2 addresses, and then some. It’s one of the sleekest Garmin watches to date, weighing just 38g, available in white or black, and is USB-rechargeable.

Simply because it’s a watch that you can’t look at while swimming, most of the data is there to be analysed retrospectively. There’s plenty to drill into, such as your stroke count, efficiency, heart rate (wrist-based) and pace. The Swim 2 has a number of swim-specific features not included even on Garmin’s top-end Fenix and Forerunner multisport watches. For us, the most useful is the pacing alert, which makes a noisy bleep and vibrates on every pool lap based off your target pace, which certainly beats checking the clock every length. The pre-programmed critical swim speed (CSS) test will help with pacing, and you can