A company that focuses on GPS navigation like Garmin has taken bold steps to expand their portfolio of devices, and fitness trackers and smartwatches are now part of their repertoire. In fact, seven years have passed since Garmin first rolled out the Swim, which happened to be Garmin's one and only swimming-focused fitness timepiece. Over the course of time, Garmin's newer releases overlooked simmers, only for the company to revisit this theme with a sequel: the Garmin Swim 2.

The Garmin Swim 2 boasts of a new, sleek look and will arrive packed to the brim with all of the newest functional technology in order to help swimmers make the most out of their pool workouts.

What does one expect from a swimming smartwatch?

For starters, the Garmin Swim 2 works best within a pool environment as it offers real-time heart monitoring even when you are in the water. Underwater heart rate tracking has proven itself to be a tricky place to maneuver, and it is encouraging to see how Garmin has pooled together its resources and specialty in order to bring this reality to pass.

Garmin has highlighted the fact that the new Swim 2 will feature auto-rest. Fitness enthusiasts who make use of running apps will find auto-rest to be the equivalent of auto-pause. Beginners in the pool do not have to worry about their performance metrics being skewed against them whenever they take a breather, as it will pause your workout record automatically, freeing your mind to focus on the challenge at hand as opposed to fiddling with the Swim 2.

Advanced swimmers will find a use for the auto-rest feature too, since it is capable of automatically detecting the moment when you stop and perform a turn at a wall during your laps. All laps will be logged automatically. Once again, this helps you focus on your performance as you do your level best to beat the previous session's marks.

Other features offered by the Garmin Swim 2 include the ability to track pace, distance, and stroke count. In fact, it is also smart enough to figure out the type of stroke you use while calculating SWOLF. SWOLF is an abbreviation for "Swim Golf" , and the score is calculated through the addition of strokes per length as well as time taken for said length. Used as a metric to measure one's swim efficiency, knowing your SWOLF score comes in handy when charting your progress over time.

If you want to do more than just swim for fun and remain relatively fit, why not settle for downloadable custom workouts? From there, you will be able to push yourself daily, while configuring alerts so that you remain on a set pace and not suffer from an unconscious drop in performance.

As for those who prefer to swim in bodies of water other than the pool, Garmin has included GPS and open water swimming to the Swim 2. In open water mode, the Swim 2 will rely on its GPS chipset to measure your distance while performing data collection on vital statistics such as pace, stroke count, and SWOLF, among others.

Other sports that the Swim 2 tracks are running, biking, and indoor cardio, as each sports mode comes with its own set of metrics and can be easily configured via its custom data screens. When used in tandem with Garmin's suite of health and wellness metrics, you will be on a better path to health and wellness.

The silicone strap will eventually deteriorate after some time considering the amount of chlorine it is subjected to in the pool, but thankfully there are replacement bands available. With a 1.04-inch display at 208 x 208 pixels resolution, this 36 gram smartwatch has a battery life of up to 72 hours in pool mode, while taking a massive hit to just 13 hours of juice in GPS mode. It has a 5 ATM water rating (up to 50 meters) which should be sufficient for standard pool use.

Those who are interested in getting into shape in style can always consider the US$250 Garmin Swim 2, where it will be available in either slate or whitestone color.