Form Swim Goggles
Swimming Goggles with a heads-up display, Bluetooth connectivity, live metrics and automatic interval detection – whatever next! Yep, smart swim goggles are here and they’re better than I was expecting.
The Form Swim Goggles have all of this and more. They work well and are actually useful rather than just a gimmick. I wasn’t sure how well they would work or how useful they’d be so it was a bit of a risk to put them on my Christmas List last year. However, now that I’ve been using them for almost 12 months I wouldn’t want to be without them.
Form Swim Goggles
First up, as goggles they are fine. They are comfortable, they don’t leak and they fit well. I can see through them, albeit with some limitations on the eye with the heads-up display. The anti-fog coating didn’t last very long, but that’s always the case for any goggles I’ve ever owned. Once it wears off things become a little less clear, but again, that’s the same with all goggles. The difference here is that most goggles only cost around £10-15 so replacing them every now and then isn’t too bad. The Form Smart Goggles cost a lot more than that so it’s a case of just putting up with less than perfectly clear vision.
They look good too, and the pod on the side that contains the ‘smarts’ isn’t too obstructive. I do feel my arm brush against it a little during some drills but it never gets in the way.
Accelerometers and a Heads-up Display
At the heart of the technology are accelerometers that detect your movement in the pool. This allows the software to know when you are swimming when you are resting at the end of the pool and when you turn at the end of each length. It’s simple really, you tell the goggles the distance of each length, and they simply count the turns and therefore know how far you’ve swum and what pace you’re swimming at
The accelerometers can also detect each stroke you take so can calculate other swim metrics such as stroke rate, strokes per length and distance per stroke. Again, fairly simple, but useful information and it can prevent a lot of counting and maths on your part whilst executing a workout.
All of this information is stored in the goggles for upload to the Form Swim app after your swim session. From here it can also be synced with other popular activity-tracking apps such as Strava and Garmin Connect.
That in itself would be nice from a tracking point of view, but most watches will do all of this for you already. My Garmin Fenix 6X certainly does. What the watch can’t do though is give you a heads-up display of these metrics as you’re actually swimming. The Form Swim Goggles can thanks to the heads-up display inside one of the google lenses.
The heads-up display is a little rectangle in the lens that displays three lines of information via a digital LED-style display. You can adjust what metrics are shown and what information you see via the app. You can have different screens set for different types of swims and there’s a different screen for rest intervals and a third screen that shows up every time you turn.
I have my Swim Screen set to show:
- the interval timer,
- the length count for this interval (in case I lose count),
- my pace per 100 for the interval and
- my distance per stroke for the interval.
My Turn Screen shows
- distance per stroke for the last length and
- my split time for the last length.
My Rest Screen shows
- the rest timer,
- my total distance for the workout and
- the split time of my previous interval.
The screen is surprisingly easy to read. I must admit, I was a little worried about this before trying them. I thought that the fact that I wear glasses these days would make it difficult. I can barely see the display on my watch when in the pool without my glasses on, but the heads-up display in the Form Goggles is fine.
Connectivity
In addition to the in-goggle accelerometers and heads-up display, Form Swim Googles can connect via Bluetooth to my Garmin watch and to my phone. The phone connectivity allows for firmware updates (yep, I have to update the software in my goggles from time to time!) and syncing of the goggles with the Form Swim App. This allows various settings such as the screen customisation mentioned above to be sent to the goggles and allows swim metrics to be sent from the goggles to the app for data tracking and analysis. It also allows workouts to be sent to the goggles too (more on that in a mo).
The connectivity with my watch allows heart rate data from the watch to be sent to the goggles so that heart rate can be recorded too. GPS data from the watch is also sent to the goggles to be used for distance measurements whilst open water swimming.
Open Water Swimming
The idea here is that your GPS watch records distance as it normally would and this (along with heart rate data) is sent to the goggles so that it can be displayed in the heads-up display as you swim. It does work, but I do find that the Bluetooth connection between the watch and the goggles sometimes breaks down. If I concentrate on making sure the watch comes close to the goggles on each stroke and my arm doesn’t stay underwater too long then it’s OK, but usually, it loses contact after a while. It regains contact again if you make sure they stay close together but it’s not perfect. When the connection is stable it’s nice to be able to see distance, pace and heart rate whilst swimming in the sea though.
Form Swim Goggles – Workouts
All of the above works out of the box and once you’ve bought the goggles these features are free to use. Where the Form Swim Goggles really become useful though is the ability to upload workouts to them and then follow along to instructions shown on the heads-up display.
The Form app has an extensive library of workouts to choose from. They also have various plans that you can follow over the course of a number of weeks. You can also create your own custom workouts within the app.
Once you’ve chosen a plan, picked a workout or created a workout of your own they are sent to your goggles where you can follow them using the instructions on the heads-up display. Once you get used to them the instructions are easy to follow and are similar from one workout to the next. It’s a good way to stay motivated during a workout and not have to think too much about what to do next.
These features require a subscription which is very expensive. I got an annual subscription with the goggles, but I’m not sure if I can afford the £155 annual fee to keep it going. It’s a shame as I do use the workouts feature and in a way, it’s the most useful part of the package. But, I only swim twice a week at the most and not necessarily all year round, so that probably works out at about £2 per swim. OK, that’s not crazy expensive per swim, but it does all add up.
What could be Improved
Overall I love my Form Swim Goggles. The technology works, the goggles themselves work and the workout subscription is useful. The app is good, I’ve had no issues with crashes and the in app visualisations of swim sessions and analysis is clear and easy to understand. There really isn’t much wrong with them.
I guess it would be nice if there was some live feedback. Yes, you can see live metrics of time, distance per stroke etc but it would be really good if the goggles could leverage this data to tell you what specifically to work on or to encourage you to hit some actually targets. If they could do this it would be like having your own personal coach in your eyeball!
Clearly, swim goggles with quite so much tech aren’t for everyone. They aren’t cheap for a start and certainly not necessary for recreational swimmers. But if you swim alone and want to elevate your performance they are a nice gadget to have.
