This is the perfect watch for me. I use it daily at swim practices and meets. I've owned the same watch for several years without issue and have bought the same watch multiple times as gifts for my assistant coaches. I have experimented with other brands and models but always come back to this one.
Ergonomics:
It fits my hand perfectly. It is not symmetrical front-to-back so I know by feel if I've picked it up backwards. The buttons are well positioned for two fingers and thumb operation. And the mode button is out of the way so never gets pressed accidentally. The lanyard is connected solidly -- giving me confidence to swing and twirl as all coaches love to do.
Electronics:
I only use the stopwatch function so I won't review other modes of the watch.
When "split" is pressed both the cumulative time and the latest split are shown. Also cumulative running time continues to tick along in the third row of the display. That's great. I love it.
Note: there is a new mode in the revision of the watch that came out this year: it can be set up to display lap time ticking along in the bottom row instead of cumulative time. I've found the new feature handy in a few instances but usually I keep it in "cumulative mode."
The watch does not auto-start after 10 or 15 seconds like some watches will do. I will never buy an auto-start watch. I like to watch the swimmer kick off the wall and breakout into the swim after each turn. I will hit the split as the swimmer makes contact with the wall, watch the race until the third stroke, which is typically 5-10 seconds later (sometime more), then I will look down at the watch to see the split. It would be extremely annoying to have to hit "recall" at every leg of the race to see that split.
I especially like the implementation of "recall". At any time during operation -- during the race or after the race -- you can hit the "recall" button at the top of the watch to see the previous split, and hit it repeatedly to see any earlier split during the current race. To get the next split when the swimmer hits the wall, simply hit "split" from the "recall" mode. It's that simple. Also very important: display of old or new splits is instantaneous. I once had a watch that would pause a long second to think as it went into recall mode causing me to miss valuable sections of my swimmer's races. This watch is instantaneous and awesome.
One of the watches I previously owned (different brand and model) had start and split buttons that "bounced". Many times I would look down to see a phantom split of 0.03 or something similarly bogus. No problems with this watch -- I've never questioned a split from this one due to electronic problems.
If I could find a watch with ALL of the above attributes but had "banked registers" to save a meet's-worth or practice-worth of splits, I would buy that. Meanwhile, this is the watch for me.
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