Poolmate 2 Review
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Was that lap 31 or 32? Now with the Poolmate Two, you don’t have to worry.
Introducing the Poolmate 2, the perfect partner for any swimmer. This watch lives up to it’s name and then some, anywhere there’s water this watch will count your laps.
Design
The watch itself is slender and fits snugly around even small wrists, the design is simple and effective allowing a secure and comfortable fit with a classic sports watch look. The blue band reminds me of old school swimming pool locker keys, (you know the ones some people pop around their ankle) I wonder if this was the purpose in its design?
The four simple buttons are easy to spot and press even when you are tired, slippery and wet. The buttons themselves aren’t waterproof, so it’s recommended you lift your wrist out of the water to use them, but I found I was doing that automatically anyway.
New improvements
The Poolmate 2 is the new improved version of the original Poolmate with additional features such as speed and open water swim tracking. For those of you who are new to the Swimovate Poolmate watches, they offer tracking of laps, strokes, distance, speed, efficiency, duration, sets, rest time and calories burned.
Battery
The battery life of the Poolmate 2 is said to be extended from is predecessor and can now last up to 2 years. So I’ll keep you posted in 2018.
In the Pool
Setting up and using the Poolmate. The Poolmate setup is simple, strap up, select your pool size by pressing the up and down key and then push start. Once you're off you can then press up and down to view your stats in real time, push to pause and record drills (up to 99). Once your workouts over the latest stats are viewable with just one press, but also stored in your log for later viewing, making it easy to compare your progress over the last few sessions. Here you can also see your swim efficiency score, which has results that are explained in the watch manual.
Open Water
To swim open water, you’ll first need to go for a calibration swim. This is a swim where the distance is already known. From this the watch can then make a distance prediction, like an in water pedometer, as to how far you’ve traveled. For more accurate tracking you’ll need a GPS sensor, but for the RRP of £70 this is a very useful feature for those brave enough to conquer a sea swim.
Out of water training
Out of water you can use the watch as a 99-lap stopwatch, so it’s great for sprint training and particularly triathletes, who have to switch between the two disciplines.
Storage
Up to 50 workouts
I can see why the call it Poolmate, this will be any swimmers new best friend.
