Open water swimming - works like a charm on S2

[thewusman]

Went for a morning run yesterday but the ocean was so calm and appealing I decided to put on my wetsuit and hit my local short course for a 1.2km ocean swim near to shore.

Results are incredibly pleasing. Apple really has created a super watch for the more casual fitness person.

Even the 100m splits were accurate, clearing showing me that incoming tide was quite strong for the 600m outbound leg, then much faster on the 600m return. Love it.

 

[Resqu2]

I did my first pool swim yesterday after saying I wouldn't get in the water with my new Watch. It worked perfectly. OP, glad you didn't get ate by a shark! After a real close encounter with a real big fin I swore I'd never swim in the crazy ocean again.

 

[KiteboardFever]

the ocean is the best pool in the world! Im glad to hear its working well in the ocean, i work in and around the ocean and never got one mostly because of the lack of waterproofing but now it is the most valuable thing i have at work

 

[IUBall22]

Looks like Lake Michigan to me. Grew up vacationing up there.

 

[daniel1948]

I have question: What is the difference between "water resistant" (which the Apple Watch 2 is) and "waterproof" (which it is not)? The Apple web site says the watch is water resistant to 50 meters. Then it says it should be used only for shallow water activities. 50 meters is very, very deep. The limit for "recreational" scuba is 40 meters (and you only get a few minutes at that depth before you incur a decompression obligation) but Apple says not to use the watch for scuba diving.

Now, seriously, for scuba, you want a proper dive computer, not a wristwatch, but they seem to be saying not to use it at the depth at which they rate it.

What gives? If it is water resistant to 50 meters (164 feet) why do they say "shallow water use only"?

I go snorkeling in the ocean and often dive to ten meters or so, 20 meters occasionally if I have a buddy. That's well within the 50 meter rating of the watch, but they seem to be saying not to use it for that. Any ideas what this is all about?

 

[daniel1948]

I did some more searching, and found some contradictory information. Apparently, "water-resistant to 30 meters" means it's okay to splash a little water on it, but not for swimming. WTF??? The Apple Watch 2 is water resistant to 50M and Apple says it's okay to swim with it (which I gather a lot of people do, so it is okay) but one web site said that even 50M is not good enough for swimming. 100M is okay for swimming, according to that web site.

So I guess I have my answer: You can swim with it but you better not take it any deeper.

I still wish Apple would make a clear statement about how deep it can go, since swimming implies submersion to at least a meter or so, and plenty of people dunk a bit while swimming. Without a clear statement, I guess I won't be getting one. When I do serious freediving I use a freedive computer, but when I'm just swimming in the ocean for fun all I want is to know what time it is, but I still want to be able to go down and check out stuff on a shallow bottom, a few meters down.

 

[KiteboardFever]

I did some more searching, and found some contradictory information. Apparently, "water-resistant to 30 meters" means it's okay to splash a little water on it, but not for swimming. WTF??? The Apple Watch 2 is water resistant to 50M and Apple says it's okay to swim with it (which I gather a lot of people do, so it is okay) but one web site said that even 50M is not good enough for swimming. 100M is okay for swimming, according to that web site.

So I guess I have my answer: You can swim with it but you better not take it any deeper.

I still wish Apple would make a clear statement about how deep it can go, since swimming implies submersion to at least a meter or so, and plenty of people dunk a bit while swimming. Without a clear statement, I guess I won't be getting one. When I do serious freediving I use a freedive computer, but when I'm just swimming in the ocean for fun all I want is to know what time it is, but I still want to be able to go down and check out stuff on a shallow bottom, a few meters down.

I think you will find that if you were to go under and not really break a bar of pressure under water it should be fine, as a boat captain i need to get wet and the benefits like tides, depths general weather and so on without touching my phone, I'm in, just don't want to pay straight $399 for it just yet

 

[thewusman]

I did some more searching, and found some contradictory information. Apparently, "water-resistant to 30 meters" means it's okay to splash a little water on it, but not for swimming. WTF??? The Apple Watch 2 is water resistant to 50M and Apple says it's okay to swim with it (which I gather a lot of people do, so it is okay) but one web site said that even 50M is not good enough for swimming. 100M is okay for swimming, according to that web site.

So I guess I have my answer: You can swim with it but you better not take it any deeper.

I still wish Apple would make a clear statement about how deep it can go, since swimming implies submersion to at least a meter or so, and plenty of people dunk a bit while swimming. Without a clear statement, I guess I won't be getting one. When I do serious freediving I use a freedive computer, but when I'm just swimming in the ocean for fun all I want is to know what time it is, but I still want to be able to go down and check out stuff on a shallow bottom, a few meters down.

I've had several watches that are only "50m" resistant, and often went down around 3m while snorkelling without any problems.

I don't think the AW2 will be any different

 

[daniel1948]

Well, as I said, I really just wanted a watch I could swim in and do some shallow freedives (5 to 10 meters typical, 20 meters maximum) occasionally, but mostly just to know how long I've been swimming. I found a $12 Casio that's water resistant to 100 meters, which even though it would probably be foolish to expect it to survive an actual 100 meters, is still double the rating of the Apple Watch, and at $12 if it breaks or only lasts for one trip to the ocean, it's no biggie at twelve bucks.

I was mostly looking at the Apple Watch because I love gadgets. I might consider it again for the GPS, but at $400 probably not. The biggest problem for me is that without my reading glasses I cannot see anything that small.