Golf GPS watches have come a long way since they first graced the fairways. Like all golf equipment and accessories today, the best golf watch GPS technology has continued to evolve in line with the latest developments and are now an essential piece of armory in the modern-day golfer’s artillery.
Providing distances to the front, middle, and back of the green is now a pre-requisite for even the most basic models. Unlike a laser rangefinder, recognised as the gold standard distance measuring device in golf, the best GPS watches boast a plethora of advanced features that add incredible value to your scorecard and life off the course too.
These include slope adjusted yardages, green contours, shot tracking, physiological measurements, and so much more. To help guide you through some of these advanced features, we’ve highlighted some of the most innovative models on the market to showcase just how useful a golf GPS watch can be.
Garmin Approach S70 GPS Golf Watch – $650 / £600 RRP
The Garmin S70 features tones of activities to better your game including HIIT, yoga, running, swimming, and more, as well as keeping you on top of your health with heart, sleep, and hydration tracking. When it comes to golf, the S70 really excels with over 43,000 pre-loaded courses and a touchscreen display that’s up there with the best. Yardage adjustment takes into consideration the environmental changes and the elevation of the green for super precise distances, with green contour data showing you the perfect place to land.
SkyCaddie LX5C GPS Golf Watch – $350 / £300 RRP
Skycaddie’s LX5C has one of the largest and brightest color touchscreens (1.39in) with full HD graphics and comes preloaded with more than 35,000 courses. It even allows you to choose your tee box, gender, and yards or meters, for additional accuracy. The LX5C lets you zoom and pan and is constantly calculating yardages to hidden hazards, so you know how far you’ve got to carry or lay up short of them. With SkyCaddie, you can trust the yardages as the GPS brand updates courses using survey-quality equipment across thousands of points per course.
Shot Scope X5 GPS Golf Watch – $300 / £280 RRP
The sleek look and range of watch faces means the X5 looks great on the wrist, and with AI-powered performance, it can track over 100 statistics to help you improve your game. The X5 has a built-in step counter and accurate, real-time front, middle, and back distances to all greens, hazards, and doglegs all on over 36,000 golf courses globally. The watch features a glare-resistant full-color 1.2″ touchscreen, which, along with the clear and large display, makes for an easy-to-navigate watch. The X5 comes with a collection of 2nd Gen RFID tracking tags that automatically track over 100 performance statistics.
TAG Heuer Connected Caliber E4 Golf GPS Watch – $2,500 / £2,400 RRP
Ok, it’s big money, but for those with a passion for watches and golf, TAG Heuer’s stunning special edition GPS golf watch is a piece of kit to get the blood pumping. You get 40,000 courses in stunning detail, plus an accelerometer and gyroscope functions to record each shot to the nearest meter. The E5 also includes a pedometer, heart rate monitor, and a ‘Golf Edition Box’ containing a host of TAG Heuer goodies.
Garmin MARQ Gen2 Golf GPS Watch – $2,300 / £2,000
When it comes to the look and design, the MARQ Golfer comes out on top. The golf-inspired color scheme, green ceramic inlay, custom etched bezel, and tritone green jacquard-weave nylon strap all ooze luxury. Of course, the watch does the basics of displaying yardages to the pin, green and hole view for over 42,000 courses, but also provides advanced features such as Virtual Caddie, Hazard View, Green Contours, Wind Data, and PinPointer. The MARQ also comes with three Approach CT10 club sensors for automatic club tracking.
How to choose a golf GPS watch If you’re in the market for a watch with some of the most advanced features then the first thing to work out which of those features will be most beneficial to your game and make sure the models you have in mind perform them to a high standard. Other things to consider might include:
Accuracy – You can have all the technology packed features in the World, but unless you have confidence in the numbers in front of you then the watch is a bit of a waste of time (get it?!) Luckily, with ever-improving satellite data, GPS accuracy is catching up with rangefinders, but something worth checking in the specifications first.
Screen quality – Once again, if you’re paying a premium for the most advanced features, you want to ensure their impact is not compromised by screen quality. Most of the best have full color touchscreen displays that make the key information pop.
Comfort – If you are not used to wearing one every day, then making sure your watch feels comfortable on your wrist is important. There’s quite a lot going on around your lead wrist with gloves and grips, so ideally your watch should be unnoticeable, and certainly not distracting when addressing your ball.
