We said 2018 would be the year wearable makers start to innovate in the swim tracking space and Spire, in collaboration with Swim.com, have done just that with its smart swimsuit.
The pool-friendly suit for men and women features Spire's Health Tag clip-on wearable, which is powered by Swim.com to track your activity in the water.
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The Tag is permanently bonded to the inside of the suit at the beltline with a special adhesive that should keep it in place in the water. Once it's paired with Swim.com via the Spire app it'll automatically start tracking as you pull on the suit and will sync data to your phone so your data can be analysed in Swim.com's app.
There's no need to charge the suit, there's no buttons to worry about and it offers automatic syncing, which sounds like it's the perfect discreet swim tracking wearable. Seeing your data in real-time might be an issue though, and we're keen to know if there might be some sort of tie-up with Swim.com's Apple Watch app to make that a reality.
The swimsuits are going to be available in late March from SwimOutlet's online store with prospective buyers able to pick from a wide variety of suits. It'll cost an extra $30 on top of the price of the suit for the Spire Health and Swim.com integration. You can sign up now here for early access and to be one of the first to try out the smart swimwear.
Spire is going to be showing off its swimsuit at CES 2018 and while we won't be trying one out on the showroom floor, we will definitely try and find out a few more details about how it all works.
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By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.