I want to buy an Apple Watch to track my heart rate and number of laps as I swim, and that's it. The reason I'm choosing the Apple Watch as a fitness tracker is that looking at the graphs on the youtube channel The Quantified Scientist, it looks like it is a lot more accurate than any other wrist-worn device, and a few percentage points off can give a very wrong heart rate reading. My primary phone isn't even an iPhone, I just have one lying around to activate it with. I haven't found any other comparisons that are this in-depth. But it's difficult to understand the software without having one, so I just want to make sure I can swim and look at my wrist and see both my heart rate and number of laps in a 15 yard pool. Also, it looks like every Apple Watch in the last several years has the exact same heart rate sensors so I can just go with the cheapest SE or whatever. Is this correct? Thanks.
Sadly, no. I‘ve been swimming with my Apple watch and also doing some cardio sessions in the pool. The HR Sensors don‘t work underwater. It will track the laps in the pool: With every pool workout you can set the length of each pool lane. For HR-Tracking you need an external HR-Tracker with Bluetooth functionality. I personally am using the Polar Connect A7
I really just want it to work when I stop and look at the watch, when my hand will be above the water but still wet. Does it work then?