The first time I try Speedo iQ, the brand’s new smart swimming goggles, I wonder whether I’ve missed something. They look like a normal pair of goggles. They feel like a normal pair of goggles. And there’s no augmented-reality display or data screen, as I’d expected from a £149 gadget promising to analyse my swimming in more detail than any smartwatch ever has. This thing is the future of swim tech, according to its creators, and three-time Olympic gold medallist Adam Ramsay-Peaty is already a fan. Can the user experience really be as simple as pressing a black button and just… swimming normally?
Apparently so. It’s only as I walk back to the changing rooms after my first 1km swim and the goggles sync with my phone that I discover they’ve been watching me rather closely. Alongside the distance and pace data I usually get from my Garmin, there’s my breathing, head position and turn performance — even a moving avatar recreating what my head was doing underwater. My average head angle was 33 degrees, but at my best I managed seven — much closer to the neutral position the app tells me reduces resistance. Suddenly I’m looking at something I’ve never really thought about in decades: not just how fast I swim, but how I swim.
This is where the AI comes in. Once I finish swimming, the goggles send my movement data to Speedo’s systems, where algorithms trained on years of swimming data work out what I’ve actually been doing in the pool.
“There are 50 per cent of people that want some kind of feedback, and there are 50 per cent that don’t”
Nate Tracy, Speedo’s vice-president of innovation
There are already smart goggles on the market trying to change that. Form’s Smart Swim 2 LT (£129) beams pace and distance into your eyeline, with guided workouts and coaching available through a £99-a-year subscription. HoloSport has gone further still: its SollaWave goggles (£173) combine fitness tracking with underwater music.
It’s a curious decision, then, for Speedo’s device to give you less, not more than its rivals. But apparently it’s deliberate. “There are 50 per cent of people that want some kind of feedback, and there are 50 per cent that don’t,” Nate Tracy, Speedo’s vice-president of innovation, tells me. The company’s competitive swimmers were particularly adamant that they didn’t want technology distracting them in the water. “You really are looking to finish the workout and go get a look at that information,” Tracy says, describing it as “a total dopamine thing” when you get out and race to your phone.
There is a smarter reason for the omission, too. The passive sensor is approved by World Aquatics for competition, meaning the same £149 goggles I’m wearing could be worn by Olympians. Speedo hopes athletes will do exactly that at Los Angeles 2028.
Are smart swimming goggles worth it?
But what can iQ do for amateurs like me? Tracy compares it not to a Garmin but to Trackman, the technology golfers use to analyse their swing. Running and cycling produce relatively “linear” data, he says; swimming is a technique sport, where moving your head by a couple of degrees can matter. “I don’t know that there’s another sport that parallels swimming when it comes to complexity and technique.”
As someone who swims for mindfulness and general fitness over split times, I go in sceptical. We track sleep, steps, menstrual cycles — do I really need more swimming data too? But within a couple of sessions I’m scrutinising my head angle. Could the tilt of my head have anything to do with my back pain? Could fixing it make me more efficient in my next triathlon?
There’s no subscription and, most importantly, I still get the screen-free experience of swimming without stats, letting my brain wander. Now to fix that 33-degree head angle. See you on the podium.