The Swim Goggles You Choose
What brand of goggle do you use? How has this changed over the 8 year gap between our polls? Also, which models do you use? A lot of that is answered in a thread on our Reader Forum where you talk about the brands and models you wear.
A number of you who are competitive pool swimmers said you train and race in different goggles. Some who are triathletes or open water racers also use a different goggle for each activity. There are 5 goggle brands that dominate: Speedo, Aqua Sphere, TYR, ROKA, and TheMagic5, in that order.
Speedo goggles are cheap, ubiquitous, available, comfortable. It’s often the Speedo Vanquisher you choose, or the Speed Socket. These are both pretty minimalist. You can get the Vanquisher in prescription lenses. Speedo crept up a little since 2013, rising in user preference among Slowtwitchers who took our poll from 19 to 22 percent.
Aqua Sphere has dropped a bit in user preference here, from 22 percent to 14 percent. In 2014 the Kayenne was a big fave among our readers, but the goggle is not inexpensive and other companies have not stood still in their product development since that time. TYR took more of a drop, not because it stopped making good goggles but because – I suspect – it’s interest in triathlon waned and users noticed. If you go to its site now and look for sponsored athletes, who you see are swimmers and Crossfitters. Its goggle share among our readers (who took our polls) has fallen by half, from a brand-leading 27 percent to 13 percent.
Just behind TYR is ROKA at 11 percent and that brand was not in existence when we polled in 2013. I suspect the R1 may be the flagship goggle, but I swim in the F1. Fitting my face is a tough job for any goggle, and the F1 handles that. My goggle, once upon a time, was the TYR Tracer and you can see a bit of similarity in the style of that goggle and the ROKA F1. The TYR that comes closest today is probably the Tracer-X Racing Nano which – like the ROKA F1 (pictured above) – has 5 replaceable nosebridge widths for my beady, deep-set eyes.
TheMagic5 is another goggle that wasn’t around 8 years ago when we polled, but has jumped up in popularity and it sits at 9 percent preference among our readers. With this goggle, there’s an app you use to measure your face and the goggle arrives ready to fit accordingly. From $65 to $175 this goggle isn’t for those with thin wallets, but the goggle is one of those sensual products that makes sport much better or much worse, depending on your relationship to your goggle. Triathletes – and perhaps Slowtwitchers in particular – are the sorts of folks who’ll spend on a goggle to get the experience they want.
Speaking of non-standard goggles for which our crowd is a market, out of the 840 or so who’ve taken our flash poll as of this writing, FORM goggles were the choice of 36 of them, which is 4 percent. Since 73 of our users (so far) have elected TheMagic5, and you know what they cost, FORM goggles are not out of the financial reach of our users. What sets this goggle apart is its heads up display. Here are some data points: the last time we polled this, in 2018, 30 percent of you had all your social training needs met. Of the other 70 percent of you who lacked a satisfactory group social relationship, more of you wanted a master’s swim team than wanted a regular group ride, or run, or a tri club, or anything else. Because of this, here’s the truth, for good or ill: 78 percent of you swim alone. Only 13 percent of you are on a formal swim team, masters or otherwise. For folks who fall in this category, a feedback device – a heads-up display, audio prompts – could be of real value. I can imagine, were I a coach of such folks, real benefits to the use of device like this.
Back to goggles, about 7 percent of you chose Swedes, and I left this pretty generic. The original Swedes were made by Malmsten, and they’re been the goggle of pure competitive pool swimmers since their intro in 1975. The skeptic would say that if you take the tires off your bike and ride the bare rim, that wheel is a Swedish goggle. But racers love them. Just about every goggle brand catering to competitive swim teams has a version of the Swede, and 7 percent of you answered Swede and I hope you chose this if you use that style of goggle, even if it’s not made by Malmsten.
The goggles you chose in 2013 were TYR, then Aqua Sphere, then Speedo. In 2013 if you swam, and if you took our poll, just over half of you swam in either TYR or Aquasphere. Today 28 percent of this cohort swims in these two brands. Where did that 22 percent go?
Among the Slowtwitchers who took the poll, and who swim, 25 percent chose 1 of 3 brands that weren’t around in 2013: ROKA, TheMagic5, and FORM. It's not quite that simple, but, I think a lot of folks who used typical, lower cost ($15 to $35) goggles either moved across to ROKA, or up in price to TheMagic5 or FORM.
Our polls show that if you don’t pay attention to triathletes, you may pay a brand price. I say “may” because I don’t see much evidence that Speedo cares about triathlon and it does fine. Speedo is the Nike of goggles: You’re big enough to rate among triathletes even if you don’t know how to spell triathlon. Our poll also shows that – as with bikes and run shoes – many of you will pay a lot more than the base price for functionality if there is a tangible return for the money you spend. Finally, on the topic of price, our poll seems to show that even a well-distributed budget product like Sporti didn't resonate with Slowtwitchers in 2013 and it doesn't resonate with them today,
