Review: Cutting smart laps with FORM Swim’s smart goggles

Pitched as your underwater coach, these smart goggles project a number of stats onto the lens while you swim, but the tech comes at quite a cost.

Can smart goggles get you swimming faster? FORM Swim seems to think so. Picture: Supplied

Smart goggles didn’t make me swim any faster, but they have may have allowed me to swim a little further.

It’s been almost 12 months since I last swam laps in a public swimming pool. But on a relatively sunny Monday I broke that dry spell and it didn’t hurt as much as last time.

In fact, I swam a lot further today in a shorter period of time compared to the last lap session I logged in a fitness app. It wasn’t record breaking time — quite the opposite at just over twice the time needed to qualify for the Olympic Men’s 400m freestyle. But it still felt good.

While much of that may have come down to diet and other exercise, part of it, I believe, also came down to having equal rest between laps.

That rest time was measured via a pair of smart goggles, a product FORM Swim markets as “your underwater coach”.

Can smart goggles get you swimming faster? FORM Swim seems to think so. Picture: Supplied

The new device – a subscription based service which costs $300 – falls in line with a long list of digital fitness products that may keep us honest when logging – or in this case tracking – our workouts and diets.

FORM Swim does this by projecting a number of stats onto the user’s right hand side lens while they swim.

Via those projected stats the swimmer can view their current swimming period, the distance they have covered, lap times, rest times and the number of calories they’ve burned.

Once out of the water and back near their mobile phone, the goggles automatically sync with the FORM app and provide a larger breakdown of the session including the time it took them to swim each lap, how long they rested between each lap, their stroke count per lap and stroke rate per minute and the number of calories burned per lap.

This can provide some interesting insight into how a swimmer performs. For me, my fastest lap was my sixth lap and my slowest was my 17th. The difference in distance per stroke was almost about .6m which shows nearing the end of first session, I was getting a little lazy.

Can smart goggles get you swimming faster? FORM Swim seems to think so. Picture: Supplied

As for accuracy, the goggles would switch between rest and swim times usually within one to two seconds of starting or finishing a lap. Even with the delay, the device would then show from about two seconds into a lap or resting instilling some confidence that then it had registered movement leaving me confident it was track my laps with near perfect accuracy.

FORM Swim offers over 1,000 different workouts, over 30 “coach-designed” plans and a custom workout builder, all of which will cost $23 per month after the first year when the initial free subscription ends.

Setting up the goggles is relatively easy and can be done in just a few minutes. Updates can be sent from the app to the goggles too.

Admittedly, it was very hard to see the projected figures when setting up out of the water but this was largely due to the fact I’m near-sighted and had to use my glasses. In the water this wasn’t as much of an issue and even did well when faced with glaring sun.

The verdict? For those who have fallen out of love with swimming and are longing to get back into it, this might just be the way to help them do it. For athletes there’s obvious benefits including being able to see and reduce lap times without having to rely on a coach with a whistle when your ears are dripping wet.

Can smart goggles get you swimming faster? FORM Swim seems to think so. Picture: Supplied

Beyond that, it’s nice to know how long you’ve been in the water and to see the time – something that pops up when a swimmer pauses their session – without having to run to the locker room or wherever you placed your bag and mobile phone.