There’s no shortage of multi-sport GPS watches that can monitor and record your swimming metrics, measuring your performance at every stroke, turn, and race. Problem is, you’d have to look at your watch in order to see any information, which you probably don’t want to do when you’re trying to finish every lap at the fastest speed you can. The Form Swim Goggles offer a more functional alternative.
At a glance, it looks just like any regular swimming goggles, with its protruding eye cups, watertight fit, and a sturdy strap to keep it secure on your face. Look closer, though, and you’ll notice a little more bulk right next to one of the eye cups. It’s actually a well-integrated design element, so it doesn’t look that out of place, so few people will likely think of it as anything more than an unusual design element.
The Form Swim Goggles integrate all the electronics in that protruding section, from the display tech and the sensor array to the battery and the Bluetooth radio. It uses one of the lenses as the primary screen (depending on which side you decide to mount the protruding section) using waveguide display technology, overlaying any information it deems pertinent to you in real-time. Unlike solutions like Google Glass, it doesn’t put a tiny screen on the corner of your eye that will require you to look up to check. Instead, it shows the data like an AR overlay, so you can maintain an ideal view of the pool the entire time, all while still getting all the information you need.
What kind of information can it provide? According to the outfit, it can show split times, interval time, rest time, total time, stroke rate per count, stroke count, distance per stroke, pace per 100, pace per 50, distance, calories, and length count. Swimmers can customize which information they want to appear and when they want them to show up, so if you only care to know how quickly you finished every lap in real time, you can set it to show the split time only after every turn. It can detect when you’re swimming, turning, and resting, by the way, so you use those events to trigger when specific information is to be displayed.
The Form Swim Goggles have built-in Bluetooth, allowing it to quickly sync with the companion app, so you can quickly get a detailed summary of your metrics from your phone. All the customization, by the way, are done right on the app, so you’ll likely be spending a lot of time with it if you want to tailor the goggle’s functions exactly to your liking. It comes with a battery rated at 16 hours of swim time and enough waterproofing to let you dive up to 32 feet.
As for the goggles themselves, they look normal enough, with the lenses getting permanent anti-scratch and anti-fog coating, so they should perform just as well as any swimming goggles. It comes with five swappable nose bridges, so you can customize the fit perfectly to your face, with contoured silicone eye seals and an adjustable silicone strap.
The Form Swim Goggles are available now, priced at $199.