5 Best Swim Watches to Boost Your Swimming Performance
Ready to level up your swimming? We’ve got the best waterproof watches and smartwatches that will help you dominate the water and track every metric you need.
Swimming is one of the most effective full-body workouts, offering a unique blend of cardio, strength training, and mindfulness. Whether you’re building muscle, improving lung capacity, or aiming for faster lap times, swimming covers it all.
For swimmers who want to monitor and improve their performance, a reliable swim watch is essential. These smart devices do much more than just track your distance and time. They monitor your heart rate, laps, strokes, and even energy zones, helping you fine-tune your training for maximum results.
After 30+ years of competitive swimming, including two Olympic Trials and weekly lap training sessions, I’ve tested countless swim watches. Below, I’ve compiled the best swim watches and smartwatches that provide excellent value for swimmers of all levels.
Key Features of the Best Swim Watches
While most swim watches track the basics, such as distance and time, the best ones offer advanced features to help you fully optimize your swim training. Here are the key metrics you can expect from a top-tier swim watch:
- Lap Counting: Automatic lap counting ensures you stay focused on your stroke instead of counting laps.
- Splits: Measure your pace at different intervals for improved performance tracking.
- Stroke Count & Detection: Know your stroke efficiency and get insights on which strokes you’re performing.
- GPS for Open Water Swimming: Perfect for triathletes or those who prefer swimming outdoors.
- SWOLF Score: A metric that combines time and stroke efficiency to give you a clear picture of your swimming technique.
- Customizable Screens: Easily access crucial information like split times, distance, and heart rate while you swim.
These features not only improve your swim but also provide data that help guide your training sessions and long-term goals.
Top 5 Swim Watches for Every Swimmer
Whether you’re a competitive swimmer or someone looking to improve your fitness, these watches have something for everyone:
1.Best multisport swim watch : Fitbit Versa 2 Smartwatch
2.Best multisport swim watch : Garmin Forerunner 945 Smartwatch
3.Best multisport swim watch : Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2
4.Best swim watch for open-water swimming :Garmin Swim 2 Watch
5.Best-in-Class Smartwatch for swimming : Apple Watch Series 8
What to Look for in a Swimming Smartwatch
Swim watches have come a long way in recent years, and with each passing year, there seems to be a fresh wave of performance upgrades.
Which can make sorting through all of the options, which are constantly changing, a little tough.
Here are the key things to look out for when choosing the perfect swim watch for you:
⭐ Waterproof rating.
All of the watches on this list are rated water-resistant in varying degrees. The Apple Watch, Samsung Active2, for example, can be submerged into 50m depth of water which is more than enough for swimmers.
⭐ Tracking.
Laps, distance, turns, strokes, splits—can the smartwatch track all of the essentials when it comes to nailing your swim workout?
Each swimmer values different metrics and rates their swim workouts by different stats. While time and distance are the two big obvious metrics, there are tons of new data sets that swimmers can use to measure and motivate performance in the water.
Time spent in specific training zones, training effects, and more. SWOLF is a popular new metric that is almost standard in most watches designed for swimming laps.
⭐ Heart rate monitoring.
Wearables, and swim watches are no different, primarily use optical heart sensors to see how fast your blood is moving, producing heart rate data. While fairly accurate, optical heart rate monitoring isn’t perfect.
For peak accuracy, invest in a chest strap—a study1 done by the American Medical Association found wearables were not nearly as accurate as a chest strap for accurate heart rate tracking.
⭐ GPS.
Open water swimmers looking to track their swim workouts, whether it’s time, distance, or just seeing how straight (or not) they are swimming will want to opt for a swim watch with GPS.
⭐ Lap and distance counting accuracy.
The accuracy of swim watches and trackers is paramount. After all, if it’s miscounting (or worse, not counting at all), much of the value in wearing one goes out the window.
In my own testing, the Apple Watch is the easy winner for accurately counting how many laps I’ve swum over the course of a workout.
The Apple Watch also gets HUGE bonus points for the fact that it’s the only swim watch that can track kicking on a board.
⭐ Third-party apps.
While many swim watches have native apps for measuring and logging your swim, watches like those made by Apple, Garmin, and to a lesser extent, Samsung, offer third-party apps.
These can be great for loading workouts to your watch and joining an online community of swimmers.
Read more:
5 Best Swim Goggles of 2025: Swimming Coaches’ Top Picks for Clear Vision and Comfort
