2 April 2024
FORM has just announced their newest smart goggles, the FORM Smart Swim 2. These heads-up display swim goggles automatically track all your swim stats as you swim while concurrently putting a screen inside the lens of the goggles for you to see everything from pacing information to structured workout details in real time. As the name implies, this is FORM’s second iteration of the goggles, following their first set that was launched back in 2019. The standout feature of the V2 goggles is an integrated heart rate sensor, which will automatically track your heart rate during your swims.
Further, they’re launching new software across both V1 & V2 goggles that adds a new openwater feature – SwimStraight – which as the name also implies, keeps you swimming straight if you’ve got reduced sighting conditions (or just aren’t good at swimming straight). Additionally, back on the V2 goggle hardware, there’s some improvements around fit and goggle strap design.
Both my wife and I have been putting various sets of these through their paces over the last while, both on nice cozy indoor pools, as well as @#$@# cold outdoor winter openwater swims. For real, 46°F/8°C water is not fun.
As always, this review isn’t sponsored. Once I’m done here I’ll get this pile of goggles back to them, and likely go out and get myself a V2 pair. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a mostly weekly video series behind the scenes of the DCR Cave. And of course, it makes you awesome.
What’s New:
The updates to the swim goggle are essentially two-parts. The first part is software-related updates, that have largely already been made available to Smart Swim 1 users via firmware updates last fall, notably the HeadCoach pieces. However, new features, including the openwater ‘SwimStraight’ feature, are coming to V1 goggles as well, via firmware update.
In any case, from a hardware standpoint, here’s how they differ:
– Added optical HR sensor to the goggles, for tracking heart rate
– Reduced the size of the electronics pod by 15%, making it slimmer
– Slightly increased the goggle temple area, to increase stabilization on head
– Improved the fit of the eye seals, to increase tighter seal and reduce leakage
– The strap is now yellow, because obviously yellow is faster than black
– The case has been redesigned to not look like a hot dog, but now includes drainage holes on both sides
As you can probably see from the above – the bulk of the improvements here are around the addition of the optical heart rate sensor, rather than other aspects of the goggles. Of course, that doesn’t mean that other minor component changes aren’t happening internally, around things like charging, chipset, etc… The charging cable remains the same as before.
Here’s some comparison shots of how the V1 & V2 goggles look (V2 is yellow strap):
You can see the slight differences in the pod size here, with V2 having a smaller tech pod portion, but an elongated plastic portion that holds the optical HR sensor.
Oh, and for funsies, the V2 version comes with a different carrying case. The previous one looked like a hot dog, the new one does not look like a hot dog.
Practically speaking, either case would work just fine. Obviously the goal here being to reduce scratches on the lenses. That said, about half the time post-swim I’ll use the case, and half the time I’ll be lazy and throw it in my swim bag with all assortment of things. So far, no scratches, but certainly that’s different than a year or two’s worth.
In the Box:
When it comes to what’s in the box, things are pretty straightforward.
You’ve got the goggles, a goggle carrying case, a charging cable, and then a slate of different nose bridge pieces. If you’ve ever had issues with leakage or fit on a pair of goggles, more than likely you probably should have poked at swapping out the nose bridges. Thus, do play the field a bit here.
Oh, and there’s some paper stuffs. Obviously, you’ll ignore that after reading this review. But you’ll find the extra nose bridges, as well as a charging cable in there too.
You’ll want to top off the charge on the goggles, as well as get it synced up to the app to update the firmware and ensure you’re on the latest. For that, let’s hit up the next section.
Basic Usage:
The first thing you’ve gotta do is pair up the goggles to the FORM app on your smartphone. This gets the goggles updated, as well as lets you make any configuration changes. This can be things like the data fields you want to use, but even just which side of the goggles you want the display pod to be on (right or left). Also, as part of this you may get a firmware update for the goggles.
Which now is the time to mention that the display pod is only on one side of the goggles, though from a vision standpoint, while swimming, you’ll actually never think about it. Like literally, I’ve never once thought about it. The display just appears in the water in front of you, and all works out no matter which side you put it on (I’ve tried both, but prefer the right side). That said, you can change which side it uses, which effectively just flips the goggles over. You’d want to adjust the nose bridge accordingly as well if you do so.
Once you’ve got it paired up, you can tweak the so-called ‘Dashboards’ which are simply your data pages and data fields. These are grouped into fields/pages that you see while actively swimming, ones you see during recovery (in between sets), and ones you see right after a turn (while swimming). The world is your oyster here in terms of data fields, as long as that oyster has no more than three data fields per page.
Also, for lack of anywhere else to put it, you’ll charge your goggles using the included cable. FORM claims 14 hours of battery life per charge, and that you can charge it for 10 minutes to get roughly a 2-hour swim. All that seems to pass the sniff test in my usage, though tracking the exact battery burn per swim wasn’t something I do (generally my litmus test for tracking it is if I have to think about charging that often, then it’s likely something I need to worry about).
With all that configured, you’ll head to the pool. Though, I suppose you might want to work on fit before you go to the pool. Still, put the goggles on and start adjusting. Remember, you’ve got those extra nose bridges if you want/need them. Once you’ve got it on your head, you’ll turn it on, and go ahead and select to do a pool swim. It’ll ask for the pool length, so it can track distance.
However, before you start swimming, stay on the page that shows your current heart rate. It’s this page that’s somewhat critical to check fit, as it shows whether or not it’s got a good lock on your heart rate using the optical heart rate sensor. That sensor needs to be up against the side of your head somewhat snugly to get good readings (or any readings).
The first few swims I kept getting HR connectivity drops. Or rather, it was almost entirely HR drops, looking like this (that pink-red line shouldn’t stop):
While I felt like the goggles were quite snug already, in talking to FORM, they recommended changing the strap position a bit (more spread out), as well as putting the goggles below my swim cap (which would effectively pull the goggles closer to my head). That did the trick, and from there out I was good to go with perfect HR connectivity every swim. Here’s the before and after:
And here’s what the HR data looks like now:
So, ready to swim, you’ll simply start swimming. In this section I’m going to focus on the basics, which is to say no structured workouts. Meaning, you might be doing a structured workout of your own, but the goggles aren’t involved in that. If you want the goggles to iterate through a structured workout, that’s the next section.
As soon as you start swimming, it’ll start tracking. It’s really that simple. It’ll show your stats automatically for all the metrics you’ve selected, including distance, time, pace, or anything else. Of course, the magic part here is the display clarity. It’s very difficult to show on camera, because a camera lens shoved into the goggles simply doesn’t come out well (nor what it looks like to your eyes). For example, here’s my phone camera lens shoved in there:
And yet, here’s what it actually looks like:
The above is an image from FORM, but in real-life it’s virtually the same. Unlike most wearable company photos that make watch displays look like 8K OLED TV screens (despite being very much not), FORM’s shots above are really that crisp and clear.
The singular downside to the goggles though is really the visibility out of them. Not forward-looking, but peripheral vision, for which there is very very little. It was my complaint with the V1 goggles, and remains my complaint with the V2 goggles (since they are identical). Whether it be in the pool, or openwater swimming, it’s extremely reduced vision to the sides, which makes things like passes (in busy pools/lanes) slightly harder – but frankly more importantly, it just makes it more boring, because you can’t see much around you in adjacent lanes.
When it comes to tracking turns, it’ll track both flip/tumble turns, as well as open (not flip) turns. Said differently, no mater how you get yourself going back the other direction in the lane, it’ll track that. The accuracy of that timing seems pretty solid, with the exception that the first length of each set seems a bit short – as if the algorithm detecting you leaving the wall off a recovery break takes an extra second or so to trigger. Subsequent lengths are perfectly fine though.
In terms of accuracy, I’ve yet to have a missed length on FORM. It’s astonishingly good, even when I have to stop mid-lane for someone doing something stupid, or if I have to pass someone, or if I completely botch/whiff a flip turn before the wall and end up just turning around non-gracefully – all works great. Note that recovery breaks are automatically tracked – you don’t ever need to press anything, ever. Just swim, or stop, or do whatever you want, and it’ll track you automatically.
From a stroke recognition standpoint, as a triathlete, I only do freestyle. So I can’t really comment on stroke recognition for the other ones, because even if I were to pretend to do them, I’d probably be doing them wrong anyways.
Speaking of which, at the end of a swim, you’ll get your stats on the FORM app for that swim. Note that the only thing that requires a subscription in these stats is the ‘FORM Score’, otherwise, everything else is included in the base stats.
Note you’ll see your heart rate shown automatically on the charts, that’s the thin red/pinkish line.
If you’ve got Strava or TrainingPeaks, it’ll automatically sync to those platforms as well, showing something akin to this:
The syncing process usually only takes a few seconds after you finish your swim, once the FORM app is opened up.
Overall, I think the biggest benefit of the goggles compared to a smartwatch tracking, is that you don’t have to play games with your wrist during the lane turn to see the stats mid-set. Further, unlike some watches which require manual button presses for tracking sets/breaks (or if they do have it, does it poorly), this just does it all automatically – and works flawlessly.
As a quick note on my wife’s usage, at this point she’s put in about 25,000m on the V2 goggles, and is pretty darn happy with them. Like me, she’s not thrilled with the visibility aspects, but in terms of the data and ease of use, she’s not even bothered recording on her Garmin watch some of the time (which is what she previously had tracked swims with). The ‘just works’ factor is exceptionally high for her.
For her swims, she’s following a manually prescribed workout from her coach (so she’s not using the structured workout portions), and then her completed FORM swims sync to TrainingPeaks after the fact for her coach to check. Overall, she’s pretty darn happy.
Structured Workouts & Coaching:
Now, the first thing to understand about structured workouts and coaching bits, is that everything here requires a subscription. That costs $15/month, or $99/year. The goggles include a free 2-month trial to said subscription. I’ve never been a big fan of this model, and FORM has tried countless models over the last few years. At one point it was a hardware-only play, then it was hardware+subscription play, then subscription only, then only if you agreed Hawaiian pizza was the best, and so on. Now they’ve settled back on a hardware price for base features, and a subscription price for extra features.
In any case, here’s the specific features which are only available with a subscription:
– SwimStraight compass for openwater swimming
– 1,500+ workouts with instructions in your goggles
– 45+ training plans
– TrainingPeaks integration, import your TrainingPeaks/plan workouts
– Workout builder, create your own custom workouts
– FORM Score that rates your swimming efficiency
– HeadCoach technique analysis components
Thus, in a nutshell – anything and everything structure or coaching-wise, is paywalled. However, other app features, like analyzing your completed workouts, do not require a subscription.
So, diving right into things, you’ve got four core options when it comes to choosing and doing structured workouts (where it iterates you through all steps of the workout):
A) Create your own custom workout
B) Choose from 1,500 pre-created workouts
C) Sync from TrainingPeaks
D) Select a FORM training plan, which has specific workouts for that plan goal
Starting off on the plan side of things, there’s a boatload of plans available. Some of these are technique-focused, some of them are distance-focused, and some of them are event-focused. There are also triathlon plans as well. The triathlon plans are for all the major distances, but don’t include the bike/run portions – just the swim side of things.
Within a given plan, you’ve got specific workouts that are done per week.
These workouts are pulled from the larger library of 1,500 workouts to choose from, for just about every distance and focus area:
It’s literally an insane number of swim workouts. Though functionally speaking, no different than the numbers that companies like TrainerRoad or Peloton would have for cycling. There’s a number of different filtering options to pretty easily find something colorful enough to meet your needs, which given the sheer quantity here, is really what you’re looking at.
You can open up any workout and dive into the nuances of it. Also, you can copy and tweak a workout too. Say you find something you like the format of, but want to add an extra set to it – you can do that pretty easily with the copy function.
Likewise, you can also just create your own custom workouts as well. This is what I did for the prescribed workouts from TrainerRoad (where I have a triathlon training/race plan). Frankly, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to do each week (ok, a lot of a pain in the ass). And thus, I’m highly considering just picking a matching FORM triathlon plan for that distance, and then going with that for the swim portion. But if you’re just doing a one-off it’s not a big deal.
Likewise, if you’ve got TrainingPeaks workouts, then those too will automatically show up in the goggles. But again, all of this requires a subscription to leverage. It’s a point that’s (rightfully) frustrated a lot of people. No other device that I’m aware of in the entirety of sports tech requires a subscription to create custom workouts, or do workouts from TrainingPeaks. Certainly – requiring a subscription to use FORM’s training plans or pre-created workouts makes total sense to me. But I’ve never been behind requiring it for other workouts.
In any case, setting aside that policy/business annoyance, the actual execution is really damn good. You’ll sync the workouts to your goggles (though, only 5 at a time), and then you’ll choose them at at the start of a swim.
As you start swimming, it’ll simply list exactly what you’re supposed to be doing for each set and recovery times. It’ll automatically count down recovery periods and then notify you how much is left in each set, as well as any intensities. Again, it’s incredibly difficult for me to capture anything mid-workout camera-wise, so here’s what it’d show, from some of FORM’s imagery:
Again, it works exceptionally well. You just forget about ever looking at a watch, or a soaking wet workout sheet at the end of your lane, or your phone with wet fingers. You simply swim.
The last area to mention is the HeadCoach workouts that came out last fall. This is essentially a technique-focused game that you play, akin to Pong, inside the goggles, focused on keeping your head position within certain parameters. It’s very addicting, to the point it’s literally the only thing you concentrate on. It’s what swim coaches wish they could do in real-time with athletes in the pool, because your only focus here is keeping a ball between two lines. Simplicity in gamification.
I wrote more about this feature and using it this past fall, so again, check out that post here.
Overall though, if you can get behind $99/year for access to all the structured workout pieces, there’s a ton of value here. Especially if you don’t already have an existing training plan or structured workouts. Inversely, if you do already have those pieces, it’s frustrating not to be able to access your own custom workouts without paying yet another subscription fee.
Openwater Swimming:
When it comes to openwater swimming, the FORM goggles have a few different modes – including one notably new feature, aimed at keeping your…well….aim. However, it should be noted upfront that these goggles don’t have GPS in them. Thus, by themselves, they won’t create an openwater swim GPS track, rather they depend on either a Garmin Watch or Apple Watch to gather distance/location/pace data. Still, the new SwimStraight feature doesn’t require GPS at all – so that will continue to work without any extra watch.
Thus, let’s talk about those two core modes:
A) FORM Goggles only: In this mode, you can use the new SwimStraight feature (if you have a subscription) to help you sight
B) With 3rd party watches: If you’ve got a Garmin watch or Apple Watch, then you can connect to those watches, and it’ll leverage the GPS data from those watches to provide pace and distance data. Afterwards, it’ll merge your activity files together, providing a seamless view from the two devices.
When you start off on an openwater swim, you’re presented with these two options. I’ve done both FORM-only, as well as Garmin-assisted. From a sighting standpoint, both work exactly the same way. Which gets us to that new feature: SwimStraight.
This feature is not complex: It’s just a compass. Still, it’s executed very well – and that’s the piece that might be overlooked. Keep in mind, each time you breathe, you turn your head – so FORM’s implementation of a compass can’t be dorked up every 1-2 seconds by your breathing, it needs to be steady and consistent.
To start though, you’ll do a calibration procedure. This takes about 10-20 seconds, and is done before every swim. It’ll walk you through this, but essentially you tilt your head down, then to the right (like touching your ear to your shoulder), then repeat for the left side, then turn 360°. And done.
Once that’s done, off you go. Assuming you’re not using a connected watch, then you’ll start swimming and sighting. Within a few seconds you’ll see the compass appear in the goggles along the upper edge, showing your current compass heading. It’s up to you to sight off something (e.g., a building, buoy, mirage, lighthouse), and then roughly remember that heading. Once that’s done, you’re simply keeping that heading. It’s really that simple.
FORM says you should still be sighting though, and in fact, it’ll remind you every 20 seconds if it detects you haven’t sighted. It’s sorta like how a car reminds you if you’ve taken your hands off the wheel too long.
Now depending on how good at sighting you already are, you may or may not find benefits here. FORM included a bunch of before/after examples in their press kit, showing drunk-uncle swimmers that were cured of their inability to swim straight naturally. And, I don’t doubt it. Especially if you’re just getting into openwater swimming, it can be very hard to swim straight for long periods of time. This makes that super easy.
However, even for myself, I can see value here. As anyone who follows me on Strava knows, after 17 or so years of openwater swimming, I’m lucky in that I can swim really darn straight very easily, even for long stretches. However, where this is super useful though is for rough sea conditions, or bad weather, when sighting becomes more challenging (a lot more challenging). This is incredibly useful for that.
So much so that FORM has managed to get certification and buy-off from the following organizations *allowing* usage of the SwimStraight feature during races. As of today, April 2nd, 2024, this includes the following organizations:
World Triathlon (e.g. Ironman races), USA Triathlon, the Professional Triathletes Organization (PTO), and Supertri
Frankly, that’s super cool – especially for longer-distance swimmers, or even iron-distance swimmers on race days with rough weather.
Now, the next piece is what happens when you’ve got a compatible watch (Garmin or Apple) that you can pair up to it. Doing the pairing process is relatively straightforward. In my case, I paired it up with a Garmin Epix Pro watch, but it supports the vast majority of Garmin watches. FORM is leveraging Garmin’s app platform – Connect IQ – and a data field, which sends the data from the watch to the goggles. You’ll start the one-time pairing process via the FORM app.
Once that’s paired up, then when you choose to start an openwater swim, you’ll select to do so with a connected watch. From there, you’ll open up the Openwater profile on your watch, and then when you’re ready you’ll start the swim from your watch. Yup, starting the swim on the watch controls the goggles – a nice touch.
Now, you’ll still get the SwimStraight compass bits like above, but you’ll also see distance and pace information, which is coming from your watch instead. Further, by default with the V2 goggles you’ll get optical HR from the goggles, however, they’ll also pull it in from your watch. And interestingly, the data it leverages in the final file is the watch-given data, not the FORM data (not sure how I feel about that…).
FORM does note that you should wear your watch on the same side as your FORM swim goggle pod (which, you can always change sides via the app). The reason being that connectivity between the watch and goggles only works above water, so it’s really only got about 1 second every other second, before it’s back underwater again. Having it as close as possible improves that connectivity.
During my swims, it’d occasionally disconnect, especially if I was treading water for a second, but then as soon as it had some clean strokes, it was good again and reconnected and simply caught-up to the watch data.
After your swim, it’ll merge the two files together (watch+goggles) to create one cohesive swim that shows up in your FORM account:
About the only minor disappointment here is that you can’t change the map type to any other map view styles (e.g. satellite/etc…), but obviously, if you’ve recorded this on your watch, then you can easily do that on the Apple or Garmin apps.
Overall though, the new SwimStraight pieces worked well, and the integration with my Garmin watch worked well too. I’m glad to see that existing FORM V1 goggles will also get the SwimStraight component via firmware update. The only downside here though, is that I feel for the price, V2 goggle owners should get SwimStraight without a subscription. That’s firmly in the camp of a watch feature, not an ongoing maintenance platform feature. I’m cool with V1 owners requiring a subscription, since that’s a substantial new thing for them – but I don’t think this feature should otherwise require a subscription on V2.
Heart Rate Accuracy:
FORM says they’ve spent a lot of time on the accuracy of the optical HR sensor, and even put together some white papers around it too. As always though, I try and validate those claims as best I can. In the case of swimming though, that can be tricky. The reason is ironically the exact same reason FORM added an optical HR sensor to their goggles: Getting good HR readings underwater is messy.
From a traditional optical HR sensor in a watch standpoint, it’s very hit or miss – often highly dependent on the person and their wrists. Meanwhile, chest straps are equally finicky in the water. Non-swimming chest straps will usually get pushed down quickly on fast flip/open turns at the end of each length. After just a turn or two, they’re often around my waist due to the pressure of the water on the push. For women, this isn’t as challenging, because a one-piece suit will block that water flow. Some companies have made swim-specific straps, like Garmin’s HRM-PRO series, but that’s better in openwater or under a wetsuit. For pool swims, you really need the very old HRM-SWIM strap instead.
In any case, what I found pretty quickly was that I actually didn’t need to mess around with straps that much to validate it. It turns out to be pretty easy to see how spot-on it was. Again, assuming you sort out the connectivity aspects I mentioned earlier in the review. But that doesn’t impact accuracy, it was either showing HR or not. There was no in-between.
Check out this relatively easy set, in the sense of easy for an optical HR sensor. Here I’ve got the FORM V2, the Garmin Epix Pro, and the Polar Grit X2 Pro. You can see at the beginning, everyone is all over the place. I have no idea how to declare a winner there, as I think they’re probably all losers in different ways.
However, once we get past that, things look pretty close between them, especially for those 500m chunks that you see in the middle.
However, look carefully at those shorter intervals below the last smiley face. The Polar loses the plot entirely, but the Garmin and FORM units are pretty close. However, FORM is actually more accurate here – you can see it responding quicker at the start of each interval, where Garmin is lagging.
Here’s another example, again, notice on the shorter intervals at the end how the Garmin lags (and Polar is still lost), while the FORM is clearly tracking intensity levels very quickly.
Then we have another swim, this time with a slate of shorter intervals, and you can see it far more clearly. While the Garmin does match FORM on some of them, most of the time it’s latent (and again, the Polar far more latent). One can see how, in this scenario, the watches are undercutting the total intensity of the workout, because it doesn’t capture the full duration of the time spent at higher heart rates.
Ultimately, I’m seeing pretty good accuracy here, or at least it appears considerably more accurate than their units. I’d still like to dig out my older HRM-SWIM strap and do some tests there, and maybe convince my wife to do some more chest strap tests (she’s not a fan of chest straps) since the strap won’t as easily slide for her. Nonetheless, at this point FORM has clearly established a higher level of responsiveness and heart rate accuracy than their key competitors.
Wrap-Up:
Sometimes minimal upgrades are the best upgrades. In the case of the Swim 2 goggles, whether or not it’s a minimal upgrade really depends entirely on whether or not you care about heart rate tracking while swimming. If you do, then this is probably seen as a pretty compelling upgrade. FORM has previously integrated with Polar’s Verity Sense optical HR sensor to clip on the goggles, but this is clearly a much easier solution that doesn’t require charging two things (and is a wash in terms of price, if you were only using it for swimming). Inversely, if you didn’t care about heart rate during swimming, then there’s not much to see here on the V2 hardware.
However, regardless of which goggle you have, the inclusion of SwimStraight for openwater swimmers is pretty slick. Especially given it’s being made available to V1 goggle owners as well. Albeit, as noted above, I feel like this should be included without requiring a subscription for V2 goggle owners.
A lot has been made about FORM’s subscription component. As I noted earlier on, they’ve tried numerous business models. But as I also noted last fall, FORM’s provided subscription numbers here certainly validate that there’s enough interest from people within this business model. Whether or not they could get more hardware purchasers with a tweaked business model is of course up for (still endless) debate. Obviously, many companies are shifting towards recurring revenue as a more stable means of doing business – especially to support longer updates on the software front.
Setting aside those features, even if you just use the base goggles for tracking your swims, it’s astonishingly good at doing exactly that. And honestly, it has been for years. There’s very few FORM users who would argue with that component of it, this simply improves upon that by bringing in heart rate tracking that seems quite accurate once you’ve got it fitted properly.
With that – thanks for reading!