FINIS SwiMP3 Review

The nice people over at FINIS sent me a big box full of awesome today. The first swim toy I got to try out was their waterproof MP3 player the SwiMP3. Once I got home from work I broke it out of the box, skimmed the directions, loaded it up with death metal, and made my way out to the pool to see how it held up to some swimming.

I have to admit I always thought the SwiMP3 was a little odd looking, probably because it’s an MP3 player that doesn’t have ear buds. It transmits tunes via bone conduction which turns out to be way more awesome than anticipated. The big downfall of most other aquatic MP3 players is that once the seal is broken between your ear and the ear bud the music on that side of your head is pretty much done for. Since this doesn’t need to be inside your ear you don’t have that problem which I really like.

The other thing that I thought would be a problem is keeping the device flat against my head. There’s a guy that I’ve seen at open water swims up north who wears one and it always looked like it would be prone to flopping around on the side of your head while you’re trying to swim… luckily it doesn’t! It manages to stick to your noggin pretty well, even while doing flip turns. Not having to constantly fidget with my music while swimming is a big plus. I want music to be a supplement to what I’m doing, not a distraction.

I swam a variety of stuff just to see how it held up. All four strokes, some underwater kicking, and a couple of sprints. The SwiMP3 does best with stokes where at least one side of your head in in the water at all times. I had zero problems with freestyle and backstroke. Breaststroke and Fly were a little odd just because the sound changes a bit between being submerged and being totally out of the water. It’s not really a problem so much as a quirk. Through all my swimming the unit managed to stay in place without any problem. I give it an “A” in swimmability.

When you get down to sound quality I think it’s totally adequate. If you’re a big audiophile you won’t be happy… with any waterproof MP3 player… ever. Water mixed with electronics is generally a recipe for disaster so I’m willing to take some loss of audio quality to get my music in the water without electrocuting myself or short circuiting an MP3 player.

The only major thing that I am not totally happy with is iTunes compatibility. If you don’t use iTunes or have an iPod feel free to ignore this paragraph… Basically iTunes does this not so cool thing where it converts your music files to a proprietary format that only Apple products can use. If you want to use a non Apple product and all your songs are in the iTunes format you have to go through the hassle of converting files to MP3. FINIS has a walk through on how to do this in both Windows and on a Mac on their website. Once you get past this step it’s pretty easy to load up music on to the SwiMP3.

Overall first impressions are good and I dig the SwiMP3. It’s not perfect, but compared to my other waterproof MP3 player (H2O Audio Interval) it is way easier to swim with because you don’t have to worry about ear buds flooding or falling out. Of the two waterproof MP3 players I have right now, this one is the one I like better.

The SwiMP3 currently retails for $149.99, but RobAquatics readers get a 20% discount on purchases made from FINISinc.com with the coupon code robaquatics09!


The SwiMP3 in the package


all the controls are on one of the “speakers”


the computer business end of the SwiMP3



side view of rocking out in a waterproof fashion

December 1, 2009 | 3 Comments »

First Night Out with My New Monofin

I really missed swimming with a monofin… too much fun! I love the feeling of going that fast in the water!

After blowing up my old monofin on Monday I went looking for some help on what style of monofin to replace it with. After consulting with Glenn from GoSwim, the Fortress, and having a conversation with Finis via Twitter the general consensus was I needed the shorter shooter style fin. I ordered it on Tuesday and by Thursday I had my new fin!

The Shooter is a lot shorter than my old trainer style monofin, but it still generates a TON of thrust in the pool. The nice part about the shorter fin (and let’s be real, it’s still pretty big) is that you can kick at a race pace. When you use a bigger fin the kick isn’t the same rhythm/motion as you would use in real life without fins on.

I think I freaked out the other people in the pool tonight with this thing. There were two people walking laps in the good lanes (I got the jacked up lane that’s supposed to be for walking) with shoes and t-shirts on. Once I strapped the monofin on I was tearing up the pool in ways they’ve never seen and were having a hard time comprehending. I swam a few hundred yards with the fin and I mainly did underwater kicking but I did mix in some butterfly which was awesome. We’re talking like 4 strokes/25. I want to play with this thing in a deeper pool to practice my breaching :)

One thing that I need to work on though is getting some kind of foot coverage. That rubber is pretty rough on the tops of my feet. I should have bought some of those little footie things… I guess that’s next on the list of goofy swim stuff I need to go buy :) Anyways… long story short, I have a crush on my new fin and wish I could swim this fast in real life!

November 6, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Trying to Figure Out Snorkels

If you’ve ever watched me swim in person you may have noticed that my head rides a lot higher in the water than is socially acceptable these days. I first got into swimming competitively in the mid 90′s when they taught you, especially if you were sprinting, to keep your eyes fixated on the wall. This is no longer en vogue, but it is firmly ingrained in my muscles as the thing to do. I get picked on for this by every coach I know and I’m really trying to fix it!

Last week when I was working out with Coach Nancy at Conejo Valley Multisport Masters she strapped a snorkel to my head to help me get used to the idea of keeping my head down. I promptly proceeded to almost drown myself… whoops. Turns out I breathe in and out a lot through my nose when I swim. We trouble shot the situation with a nose clip and after a little practice hanging on to the wall I figured out how to breathe through it… kind of. As much as I suck at using a snorkel I have to admit she was onto something.

I got my hands on a Finis Center-mount Swimmer’s Snorkel and made a trip to the gym today to try and master the dark art of breathing through a little tube. It didn’t go well but it wasn’t a complete failure. I can go wall to wall using the snorkel (as long as I have a nose plug in play) without much incident. I feel my head holding that down position much better and I feel a little smoother. It also takes some pressure off my neck which has been giving me trouble lately. Despite a few attempts, flip turns remain a no-go for me. I managed a few push-offs from the wall where I had to clear the snorkel when I surfaced but I’m still not very good at it. I have a really hard time dealing with the inhalation of water and my gag reflex. If there’s just a little bit of water in there and I suck it in I have to stop and kind of reset my breathing.

After swimming with the snorkel for a while I switched back to regular swimming and I could feel myself maintaining a much better head position. I continued to switch back and forth between snorkel and no snorkel swimming every couple hundred yards. Even though I’ve yet to master the snorkel I did feel like I got a lot of help with my head positioning and this is an excellent tool for those of you like me with a heads up freestyle affliction. I still have a lot of practicing to do before I can bring this thing to a workout with me, and I’m going to try a few other things that have been recommended to me to try and bring my head in line. Hopefully in the near future I will learn how to put my head down and go fast at the same time!

November 1, 2009 | 9 Comments »

Behold the Mighty AMPhibelly!!!

Isn’t it majestic? It’s in danger of becoming extinct at the end of the year so we really need to appreciate it’s mysterious bulgy beauty while it’s here. I’ve put together a few fine examples above that I’ve managed to capture in their natural environments.

I bought the Finis AMPhibian recently and my gut feeling is that it has potential to be a pretty fast suit… but there is something about the suit’s gut region that doesn’t seem quite right to me. It’s just weird. I would love to know why it has a semi-translucent fabric midriff… anyways… anyone else have an AMPhibelly to share? Send me a picture, I’ll crop out the faces to protect the innocent :)

August 26, 2009 | No Comments »

Trying on My New Finis Suits

I got my Finis AMPhibian fullbody suit last night and I tried it on as soon as I got home. I’m a fair sized gentleman so I bought the biggest size available (34) and just hoped for the best on sizing. Usually the smallest suit I will attempt is a 36, but then again everyone uses a different sizing system and none of them make any sense so I just buy big and see what happens.

One of the oddities of this suit is that it has zippers on the bottoms of the legs. The upside is that it is really easy to step into and out of the suit. The downside is that you have little zippers fluttering right against the backs of your ankles. I haven’t gotten this suit wet yet so I don’t know if it’s a distraction in the water or not, but I think it might be. Plus if you have hairy legs it might be a little death defying to zip these things by yourself.

After being pleasantly surprised at how easily I stepped into the suit things took a turn for the worse. The waist was almost impossible for me to get past my hips. It has like zero stretch. You can see in some of the pictures that it trims my waist waaaay in. The jumping, wiggling and gyrations required of me to get into this thing were ridiculous. I would never put this on in a public locker room. This is a get-it-most-of-the-way-on-at-the-hotel kind of suit. Eventually I got it up and over my hips and then shoulders. It was on a little crooked but the thing is so tight that I couldn’t shift it around… and frankly I wasn’t going to take it off and try again. I was getting sweaty at this point for all the effort require to get in the goofy thing.

Heidi thinks that I look like a robot with the weird stomach panel. She also asked if it was a maternity escape hatch that could be removed in case of baby bump. I’ll admit the stomach thing is very odd. It also has some kind of strap across the middle that makes for some interesting lines if you’re a little doughy like me.

I’m not sure when or where I’m going to get to try this thing out in the water, but it feels like it would be fast. It might even end up on a friend of mine before I wear it underwater. The material is slick and the compression is borderline unreasonable. It’s not the type of suit that I would wear all day long at a meet like a B70 or my TYR Tracer Light. It would have to come off between events. On a skinnier person maybe not. No matter what happens, this seems like a pretty good deal for $60

I also bought a pair of Finis Hydrospeed race tights. They’re size 36 and might actually be too big for me. The waist is fine but they’re a touch too long. I recently got my hands on a pair of TYR Fusion 2 race tights and they’re also 36′s. The TYR suit fits tighter and isn’t as long. I think I’m going to try out both of these in practice to get a feel for them since I don’t have a pool meet until October to do my experiments. I’ll report back later.

August 21, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Finis Suit Blowout! Get Them While They’re Cheap!

I just saw this on Swimming World Magazine today… Finis is giving major discounts on their whole techsuit line up. I guess they really don’t want to be sitting on a big pile of non-FINA legal swimsuits come January 1st.

I’ve seen some of their AMPhibian suits at meets and it’s fair to say they’re interesting looking… some people might say ugly. I posted the link on Facebook and one of my friends called them “icky.” So take that for what it’s worth, just remember it is a $60 or less for a techsuit that retails at $350. I bought a bodysuit and some race tights as a science experiment. Not sure that I can fit into the bodysuit, but worst case scenario it goes into my techsuit loaner bag.

You can check out all the stuff they have on sale right now here.

Anybody that has one want to interject on what they think of the Finis AMPhibian suits?

August 18, 2009 | 2 Comments »