Open water test for Garmin 310XT

First, let me say that this watch is an attention grabber. My friend, a fellow triathlete, IN noticed it immediately before the swim leg of the OSIM tri. So some free advertisment for Perfect Watch.

Second, the erratic GPS tracking that I observed at the pool continued on the open water swim. The swim route of 750m was captured as 1.83 km. And if you believed the GPS tracking, I swam in zig-zag fashion all the way.

I'd be the first to acknowledge that I am not a good swimmer and I'd to sight and change course frequently. But I believe the tracking error on the swim is quite large.

Also, the elevation measure is unreliable. Apparently I went 40 m under sea level at one point and did not drown.

So my 1.5 km swim was recorded as 4.19 km. :(

View swim on Garmin connect.

The HR capture was good once I exited from the water. So no issue there. And it was a breeze thereafter. The GPS tracking for the cycling and run legs were spot on.

Next question I had was how well the synchronization upload would work. In the past, I had some trouble uploading multisport workouts from the FR305. The good news is that this time around, it was fuss free. The three legs were uploaded as three different events. No problem whatsoever.

So the good news is that the Garmin 310XT works well as an all-in-one watch for triathlons, but not one that I would necessarily want to rely on for data capture features while on the swim. But then, won't it be nice to record HR, swim pace, etc for the swim leg?