Fitbit swim

[aaron811]

I was trying to decide between the Fitbit Ionic and the Vivoactive 3. When I used my original Vivoactive it would always sync my swim with Strava. I did a 500 yard swim and wanted to capture it with my Strava to keep track of times and it is not syncing. Any help? If I knew that it wouldn't sync swims with Strava I would have went with the Garmin.

[Annie311]

I am not happy with the swim feature as it is not accurate at all I did a 200m swim in a 50m pool and ionic has recorded it as 6 lengths at 150m??? With that an not being able to upload music, plus it is slow e.g when you go to an app like weather or Strava it can take 5 seconds or more for the screen to come on or the swim after a finished a length the watch is moments behind ☹️. Was this watch even tested? 

Contemplating asking for a refund! 

[erjabato]

Hi;

I would really LOVE a waterproof tracker that would include HR monitoring (even if not accurate 100%).  I want to swim but need to monitor my HR as well so that would be amazing.

On the other hand, my android app doesn't show much information about the swim. Calories per 100m, and lap counter. No more.

I would like to have other measurements like distance per stroke. That would help me to improve and effectively measure my swimming. And I really think having the data there it's not so difficult to get.

Let's see if we can get it in next firmware..... 🙂

[edit001]

At the moment optical HR has enough problems as it is so adding water to the equation might be next to impossible to handle with the current generation of sensors (and algorithms) that we have in our watches at the moment... 

I don't like the fact that Fitbit did not release (or probably I missed it?) a timetable or sorts for the features they want to implement in the new Ionic because I feel like it has so much potential. Yes, I am aware that it will never turn into a Fenix 5 but it could do so much better than it is now.

[NellyG]

@erjabato when I manually start a swim with the swim tracker I get no heart rate recorded, but if I let Smart Track take care of it (which is does beautifully) then I get Heart rate recorded. I dont know if they all do this but worth a try. From my view point the heart rate record while swimming is too high (I know I dont worknthat hard), but it is known not to be reliable under water. But anyway, I DO get a Heart Rate graph.

[JGobeil]

I use Spinning to record HR in the pool.  I have not tested its accuracy but it looks reasonably correct.

[erjabato]

Thanks for the hints.

I would say that if you wear the watch tight enough the readings could be decent to compare with other sessions. Maybe not accurate, but good to have a look at.

How do you activate Smart Track? I was swimming for some time without indicating any activity and it didn't catch it....

Regards.