When my mother uses an elliptical machine, she covers the screen with a towel. She says she doesn’t want to “become obsessed” with when it will end. For me, numbers are everything.
I have to count down the minutes, seconds, and fractions of a mile as I go. Obsessing over my pace and stats is how I keep my brain busy while I work out. There isn't much opportunity to do that while swimming, which is why I leapt at the chance to try the Form Swim Goggles, which have a screen built right into them. Boy, are they fun.
The goggles automatically detect the type of stroke, stroke rate, and split times (the times for each lap in a multi-lap interval), while the see-through augmented reality (AR) display in the lens shows you any combination of these metrics you want, in real time. There are several watches on the market that can also measure this kind of data automatically, but the novelty of not having to wait until the end of a lap or awkwardly glance at my wrist mid-stroke to get information is hard to overstate.
On top of that, the $199 price tag on the Form Swim Goggles is surprisingly competitive with wrist-based trackers.
To start a workout, you select Swim in the Goggles' menu, enter the length of the pool you're in, and push off! That's about it. You’ll notice a delay as the accelerometer and gyroscope start recording and the computer starts analyzing. After a second, the timer retroactively compensates, showing the correct time you started in your field of vision. (You can display the data in either of your eyes.)
The company used machine learning to train the computer, looking at data recorded from a large sample of swimmers of all levels. The onboard processor recognizes the accelerometer signals as backstrokes or breaststrokes, and can tell if you’re turning around or taking a rest.
I found the stroke detection to be bang-on, but the lap detection was overly sensitive. If I looked behind me to glare at the swimmer basically tickling my feet with their lane-tailgating, the goggles would sometimes split one length into two, calculating my speed to be twice as fast as it was in reality. In a crowded pool, that guy nonchalantly cruising on a kickboard who drastically changed my pace also muddied up my time and speed. Form says it has implemented post-processing to detect and correct for this automatically, though it's tough to account for every situation.
The goggles are perfectly comfortable, with dense lenses and smooth, strong, adjustable rubber straps. They come with multiple nose-bridge sizing options too.
Having numbers float in your field of vision does somewhat impair your spatial awareness. I invaded some personal bubbles and did some lane-drifting before I swapped the display to my non-dominant eye. After wearing it for a while, you get used to switching your focus. There is, however, little to be done about the lack of peripheral vision on the side with all the tech in it.