Can You Swim With the Garmin Forerunner 165? Yes
Can you swim with the Garmin Forerunner 165? Yes—pool and open-water tracking, 5 ATM, SWOLF, and the key limits before you buy.
Yes. The 165 tracks pool and open-water swims, but its real buying decision is training depth: it is excellent at recording a session and limited at authoring one on the watch.
Can you swim with the Forerunner 165?
Yes. It is water-rated to 5 ATM, has dedicated pool and open-water profiles, and records laps, strokes, pace, and SWOLF. The limitation is training guidance, not basic swim tracking.
Forerunner 165 swimming scorecard
The 165 is a capable swim tracker with one obvious ceiling: it records structured training better than it creates structured training.
What it is like in the pool
Set the pool length, select Pool Swim, and start. The watch handles automatic lengths, rest detection, stroke breakdown, pace, distance, and SWOLF without button presses between lengths.
The AMOLED display is bright and easy to read, while the 43 mm case stays light for long sessions. Kick sets, one-arm drills, pauses, and poor push-offs can still need a drill log or a later correction; no wrist watch can infer every drill perfectly.
Open water: good, not flagship
The open-water profile uses GPS for distance and pace and records stroke rate. It is a sound option for recreational lake, harbour, and sea training when a little track drift is acceptable.
Single-band GPS is the trade-off. If you swim demanding routes near cliffs, bridges, or tree cover, a multi-band watch such as the Forerunner 570 or 970 is the safer upgrade. No wearable promises perfect distance in every body of water.
How to get structured workouts onto the 165
The 165 cannot author a set such as 8×100 on 1:45 from the watch itself. It can still load a compatible FIT file, which makes the limitation manageable for swimmers who plan sessions before they enter the water.
Start with the AquaPlan workout generator or read the FIT export guide for the exact transfer steps.
Should you spend more?
Upgrade to the Forerunner 265 when on-watch CSS, richer training metrics, and a more swim-aware training toolkit matter. Choose the 570 when triathlon and multi-band GPS are more important than the 165's lower-cost simplicity.
If you export workouts from AquaPlan anyway, the 165 closes most of the practical gap for recreational swimmers. If you are replacing a Swim 2 specifically, compare the documented Swim 2 replacements before buying.
Sources and editorial notes
Feature availability is checked against Garmin's manuals and product documentation. GPS performance varies by conditions, so this article does not turn a feature list into a lab-accuracy claim.
Article source
Written and maintained by AquaPlan Team, Swim Training & Product.
The AquaPlan team builds swim-training software for structured pool workouts, Garmin-compatible FIT export, printable workout PDFs, and progress tracking.
Focus areas: Structured swim workout design, Garmin-compatible FIT file export, Pool training plans and workout-library systems, Swim training tools for web, iOS, and Android.
Editorial standard: AquaPlan is built by lifelong swimmers — 20+ years in the water, competitive racing, and countless hours on deck. Our training guides come from that experience, not a content mill.