There's a point in every swim session where lap 20 feels exactly like lap 19, and your brain starts negotiating. I do a lot of lap swimming here on the Gold Coast — I love it, but length after length gets boring, and that's the honest reason I stop earlier than I should. For the last few days I've been swimming with the HoloSport SollaWave, and it's the first bit of gear that's actually fixed that: goggles, in-ear swimming headphones, an MP3 player and a swim tracker, all in one 76g unit. Playlist on, in the pool, just swim.

Today we're testing the HoloSport SollaWave — smart swim goggles with music built in. Unboxing and setup, loading music straight onto the goggles from my computer, then in the water: the fit and seal, whether the ear tips keep water out, how music and podcasts actually sound underwater, whether the lenses fog, the on-goggle controls mid-swim, and the lap counting and swim data in the HoloSport app. All of it in the pool and in the ocean, up here on the Gold Coast. I've also got the HoloSwim 3 Pro on the shelf — a completely different take on the same problem — so there's a quick word on that too.

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01What Is the HoloSport SollaWave?

The SollaWave is four things in one pair of goggles: swim goggles, in-ear swimming headphones, a music player, and a swim tracker. The headphones are integrated directly into the goggles — they're not a separate pair you clip on — and the whole unit weighs 76g, which, given everything crammed in there, feels like nothing on your face.

The lenses are IP68 rated with a TÜV-certified nano anti-fog coating that HoloSport says is tested to 10,000 wipes, and there are prescription options from -2.00 down to -6.00 if you need them. You get four sizes of waterproof ear tips in the box (S/M/L/XL) so you can find a seal that actually holds.

02Unboxing & Setup

Out of the box: the SollaWave goggles, four sizes of waterproof ear tips, the magnetic four-pin charging cable, a USB adapter case, and the manuals. That's it — no faff.

Setup is about as simple as tech gets. Charge them, connect to the HoloSport app, work through the ear tips until you find the size that gives you the best seal, and load your music. The ear-tip choice is the one bit worth taking your time over — get that right and water stays out of your ears completely, which turned out to be a bigger deal for me than I expected.

03Loading Music — and Why There's No Bluetooth

Here's the bit that explains the whole product. Bluetooth doesn't work properly through water. That's the wall every "waterproof headphone" runs into — you can seal the buds all you like, but the signal from your phone won't make it. So the music has to live in the headphones.

On the SollaWave it does. I plugged the goggles into my computer and dragged the files straight on — MP3, WAV and WMA supported, and storage for more than 800 songs. Once they're loaded, the phone stays in the bag. Goggles on, pick what you want to listen to, get in the pool. I've been running London house music and podcasts on mine, and there's Bass Boost and Hi-Fi sound modes in the app if you want to shape it.

04In the Pool: Fit, Seal & the Anti-Fog Test

Before the first swim I did what the instructions say — wet the lenses, dry them, then a bit of water on again — and put them on. The seal around the eyes is genuinely good. No water creeping in, no pressure marks that had me adjusting every second lap. The strap ties off at the top and stays put.

The ear tips are the quiet hero. They seal properly and they stay in place — no water in my ears, which for me has always been the annoying part of lap swimming. And the anti-fog held up: they didn't fog on me once, across several days of swimming. That's the claim I was most ready to be cynical about, and it just worked.

I've had them in the ocean too, not just the pool. Open water, by the river, the lot — the seal holds the same.

05How the Music Actually Sounds Underwater

I genuinely wasn't sure what to expect from headphones built into a pair of goggles. I've been impressed. The music sounds great underwater — full, clear, and loud enough to get into the beat of it. I can hear the track properly with my head under, not a muffled version of it.

Podcasts work just as well, which is the other half of it for me. And the controls on the goggles work while you're swimming — I changed songs mid-lap without stopping, without touching a phone, without breaking stroke. That sounds like a small thing. It isn't. The whole point is not interrupting the swim.

This is the change, honestly: I put a playlist on and I just keep going. Lap after lap stops being a countdown.

06Lap Counting, Turn Detection & SWOLF

While all that's happening, it's tracking. The SollaWave runs 9-DoF sensors with HoloSport's PulseCode AI, measuring distance, duration, pace, lap count, strokes and SWOLF — and it feeds the information to you through the headphones while you swim, rather than making you stop and squint at a watch.

My test pool is only 6 metres long, so I was constantly hitting the end, turning and swimming back — which is about the hardest thing you can give a lap counter. It kept up: it detected the turns, counted the laps, and built the total. It also picks up rest periods, so your session data isn't inflated by the time you spend hanging off the wall getting your breath.

One session came back at 77 metres in 1 minute 27 seconds with the stroke count and score alongside. SWOLF is the interesting one — it combines your time and your stroke count into a single efficiency number, so you're not just looking at how far you went but how well you moved. It gives you something to compete against yourself on, which I like more than I expected to.

07The HoloSport App

The app syncs the session across once you're out. The home screen runs through your performance — distance, time, laps, calories, your swimming score — and you can set targets for what you want to hit. There's a records section for your times in the pool.

You set your pool length in there (mine needed changing straight away, being a 6m pool) and your swimming style, and that's what the lap tracking works off. The sound settings live in the app too — Bass Boost and Hi-Fi — plus a Discover section for browsing. It's not a complicated app, which is exactly right for something you use for 30 seconds before and after a swim.

08SollaWave vs HoloSwim 3 Pro

I've also been testing the HoloSwim 3 Pro here on the Gold Coast, and it's worth knowing these are two completely different ideas. The HoloSwim 3 Pro has no music at all. Instead there's an AR display inside the goggles showing your swimming information live while you're mid-lap.

So: SollaWave is about making swimming more enjoyable — music, podcasts, keeping you in the water longer. HoloSwim 3 Pro is about pushing yourself — seeing your training data in front of your eye and racing it. If you swim to train, that's your one. If you swim laps and get bored, this one. Full HoloSwim 3 Pro review is coming shortly.

⚙Full Specs

Four hours of battery is plenty for swimming — you're not doing four-hour sessions, so in practice that's a week or two of laps between charges. The magnetic four-pin cable clips on and there's a USB adapter case in the box. No Bluetooth, by design: the music is on the goggles because that's the only thing that works through water.

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