THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY
Two minute review
Finis smart glasses can be attached to a small module that fits into the corner of a lens and tracks swim metrics such as laps, run type, gaps, and breaks. It also contains a digital display that you can use to closely monitor performance and receive feedback while swimming.
From a tracking precision perspective, the goggles perform very well, reliably capturing data such as distance, pace, rest time on par with Garmin and Coros pool swim tracking. It also offers a good set distribution, recognizing swimming movements in the companion app.
Unfortunately, while the tracking seemed reliable, the experience of trying to glance at the small screen was not that great, and thus did not seem very useful to have at our disposal while swimming.
Ciye's companion app isn't the prettiest, but it does present its swims well and offers the ability to connect to third-party apps like Strava, Swim.com, and Apple Health.
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However, the overall smart swimming experience isn't perfect and seems limited compared to Form's swim goggles, which offer a much superior screen, a smoother app, and compatibility with third-party devices like Apple. Watch, Garmin watches and the Polar OH1 heart. rate monitor. You now have a training subscription service.
If you really want a pair of smart swim goggles, take them from Form and in return, you get something that works on all fronts.
Prices and availability
Finis smart glasses are currently only available for purchase in the United States, Australia, and Canada, but the company plans to launch them in other markets at a later date. In terms of price, you'll have to pay € 235 / AU € 350, which is more expensive than competitors like Form and its smart swim goggles, which cost € 199 / € 199 / AU € 265.
Integrated
Out of the box, these smart glasses look like pretty normal glasses. You can choose them in white / smoke or with blue or mirrored lenses, but the design and the way intelligence is applied remains the same across all models.
It has five different sized nose bridges to ensure a good seal and a good fit, and they are easy to snap into place. The strap is adjustable although it seems a bit long to us, although it does not get in the way when swimming.
You also have the small tracking module with the integrated screen, which fits inside the left lens of the glasses. Once it's in place, there's a raised button on top of the goggle seal that you can press to start tracking. There are also two small charging points where you can magnetically hold the charging cable, so you don't need to remove it when you need to turn it on.
This little tracker is powered by a company called Ciye, which stands for Coach in Your Eye. Ciye and Finis don't specify which sensors are built in here to track swims, but we do know that they are capable of tracking split times, laps, rest time, and swim time. After swimming, you can also view the pace, lap details, total swim time, and rest time. They also work in open water, although currently they can only capture swim time if you are not in a pool.
This tracker can only be attached to the left side of the glasses, and although you can use it on another pair of glasses, it must be another pair of smart glasses, which will cost you € 35 per pair.
On the outside of the Ciye tracker is a small digital display, again with no resolution details, but it is a very simple OLED-style black and white display with room to display around four or five words at a time.
From the Ciye Companion Phone app, you can adjust the location of the text on the screen for a comfortable view and decrease or increase the screen brightness while choosing what to show on this screen, so you can prioritize laps, swim time, or sets. You can also enable an abbreviated view mode if you don't want to fill the small screen with a lot of text.
The bezels themselves feel well built overall. They weren't bulky to wear into the pool and they didn't create horrible streaks in the water. It was nice to see added protection for the lenses thanks to the chemical resistant anti-fog coating. It's a shame that you can't move the tracker to the other side of the glasses and it won't work with the unfinished glasses.
Performance
So how well do Finis smart glasses perform at tracking? Well, we would say there is good news and bad news.
We'll start with the good, and that's tracking reliability. First, you must choose to add groups to the phone app to make sure the data is accurate. You can add and edit pools to make sure you cover the precise distance and change from meters to meters or vice versa, but everything must be done from within the app.
Then when it's time to start, just press the button on the goggles and start swimming.
One problem we found, however, is that it is not easy to simply turn off the glasses. You have to wait 10 minutes for them to turn off and it's easy to accidentally start taking a bath when you don't want to.
We compared it to the swim tracking modes of the Garmin Enduro and Coros Pace 2. Two sports watches that we found quite reliable in terms of pool swim tracking. All of the stats you'll get here are pretty standard and you'll find them on most swim trackers, but things like distance, pace, and break time recognition seemed very reliable in our tests.
Once you are done swimming, press this button again to end the workout, and if you have your phone close by, you can sync the swim with the Ciye app. In this app, you can see a more detailed breakdown of your stroke, including individual strokes and a breakdown of performance. If you want to send your swim data to other apps, you can connect them to Strava, Swim.com, and Apple Health.
Aside from viewing your swim track history and unlocking some basic achievements, there isn't much to revisit the app. You can add other Ciye users to your tracking community, but you can't create or track workouts, which would be a useful feature to incorporate here.
Now let's move on to the bad, which is centered around the screen. It is a small screen for beginners, which is designed so that you can take a look and not dominate your vision and it may turn out to be distracting while swimming.
A fundamental flaw that we discovered despite using the screen positioning feature in the app and increasing the screen brightness, if you don't have a perfect view it can be difficult to see this screen.
We wear glasses and contact lenses, which must be removed before entering the pool, and we had a hard time seeing the screen clearly enough to absorb the statistics and feedback in real time. Even very deliberate squinting made it very difficult to visualize the stats and prevented us from swimming. Playing around with screen positioning and nose bridges didn't solve that problem for us either.
Fortunately, the screen is not clogged with water and there is a small notification light facing you instead of others to let you know that you are tracking. The screen just wasn't big enough, not sharp enough, and not clear enough. If your vision is good, you probably won't have a problem here, but we won't.
On the battery side, it's a good experience. Finis claims they should last four to six hours and for a 40 minute bath we only saw a 2% battery drop. Although we have seen in some sessions that the battery has drained considerably, most of the time it seems to be due to the glasses not turning off correctly and trying to force a connection to our phone.
The battery should last a full week of swimming, although it is not without its problems. When charging, we would surely have preferred a less fragile and more difficult to remove cable.
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THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY