Parshooter36
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Posts posted by Parshooter36
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50 minutes ago, Josh Ross said:
I haven't had that issue, my weather has been visible and accurate since the start. Odd that the fix was only temporary. Any chance your phone has a restriction on the Garmin app? Like if it can run in the background or have access to that data it needs?
I accepted every permission it asked me for when I installed the app, but maybe there is something deeper in the settings that I have not found. I will try and look when I get home tonight.
- sirchunksalot and Josh Ross
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Is anybody else having issues with the watch retrieving weather data? Everyday mine just has dashes on the weather which causes my plays as numbers to be way off. I did a search that lead me to the Garmin forum and the only workaround that was found was to uninstall and reinstall the Gamin Golf app from your phone. I did that and it worked, but the next day I had to do it again to get weather data befor my round last night. Woke up this morning and had no weather data again.
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I will check my watch to glove distance at league tonight, but it has not been an issue for me. I was use to wearing a watch while playing, so I guess I didn't pay that much attention.
- Josh Ross and sirchunksalot
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I go back and forth on this one. I really don't like using the line because I feel like I spend way too much time lining it up. But, there is definitely an added level of confidince standing over a 5 footer knowing all you have to do is get the ball rolling on that line and it should hit the hole.
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1 hour ago, KC Golf said:
The battery life is really impressive
Thank you for the feedback!!
The battery life is beyond impressive. I have had my watch for a week now, have played 63 holes of golf and am till at 18% battery life. I have never had a device capable of more than 36 holes before and most of those would die before I got through my 2nd round.
I did notice this weekend that I was struggling to see the screen while being on the course even though I have the brightness maxed out. I'm wondering if there is a battery saving mode once it gets below a certain battery percentage because I don't remember having issues seeing the screen earlier in the week. I plan on charging it tonight so it will be fully charged for my league round tomorrow.
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8 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:
Did your yardages have triangles next to them? If so, you just have to tap them it should go back to the actual yardages.
I don't remember seeing a triangle, but I also wasn't looking for one. If it happens again I will make sure to check for that.
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I had a weird issue this weekend with my yardages. I was playing a different course and things started off very normal. After the 5th hole it did not prompt me to enter my score. I didn't think too much of it and just advanced it to the next hole. For the rest of the round my yardages were off by 30+ yards. We were only playing 9, so I just dealt with it. The next day I played the same course and on the 1st hole the yardage was off again. The really weird part is even though I was 130 out and it said I was 163 out, it still prompted me for a 9 iron which is my 130 yard club. At this point I decided to reboot the watch and the yardages were spot on the rest of the day. Today, same thing. I don't know if it is just this course or what, bit it was definitely odd.
- Josh Ross and sirchunksalot
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6 minutes ago, Josh Ross said:
You can! I also receive stuff constantly but there are some things I want to come to my watch. I've been able to block certain apps from notifying the watch but it still comes to my phone. One thing I want to look into though is the ability to silence notifications while golfing, not sure I'd like my watch to vibrate about an incoming text mid-swing.
That is a great point about notifications during your round. I haven't had that happen yet, but that would be very distracting.
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32 minutes ago, revkev said:
Great job guys - you are making me think that this one may not wait for Santa. I may request it as a gift from the birthday boy bird.
Actually I have a writing project due in a couple of weeks where the honorarium will almost cover the cost. Throw in an upcoming wedding and funeral and I would be there. So please keep up the good work.
How does the watch know what club you are hitting, btw? You may have mentioned it but I haven't picked up on it yet. I only have experience with devices that use probes. Also if you are using it to monitor vitals while sleeping when do you charge it? Do you take a night off once a week or at some sort of interval based on how long it holds a charge?
Thanks
After the watch detects a shot it prompts you to select which club you hit. It brings up a rotating club selection menu that you can scroll through to find your club. It was very good about being on or near the club I hit when the prompt came up. When you set up the watch it asks you for your driver distance, so I assume it is using a calculation to estimate the distance of the rest of your clubs. I too am use to automatic club tracking from my Shotscope V3. I plan to use the watch as is for the entirety of the review period, but I may buy the Garmin CT10 sensors down the road.
I have not used the watch while sleeping. I toss and turn quite a bit though the night and would be afraid of cracking it on the nightstand. Hopefully one of the other testers can answer that for you. I will say though that I am nearly 4 days in with 18 holes of golf and the battery is at 64%, so it does not look like the watch will need charged very often.
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I spent 30 minutes working with the swing tempo tool again last night before my round. My driver club head speed is in the low 90s and I always thought I had a smooth swing, but apperently my tempo needs work. The goal is 3:1 backswing to downswing and I was closer to 4:1. I knew I had a fairly deliberate backswing, but even if I tried to take the club back as fast as I could the best I could get was around 3.5:1. I can only assume that this means my downswing is too agressive and my transition is not as smooth as I thought. I have never given much thought to my downswing other than club path, so I am really excited to dig into this new data and see if it can help my swing.
On my round last night I had my shot tracking turned on and was promted on all of my full swings to select the club I had hit. It only registered 1 pitch shot, I had to add in the rest of my greenside chips when I edited my round. This was not unexpected and not a huge deal for me. One thing that does seem odd to me coming from Shotscope is that I cannot position my putts on the green in edit mode. This could be user error on my part, but I have not been able to add figure out a way to do it.
The only odd thing I found during my round was my PlaysLike distance. It was adding 50 - 100+ yards for wind on the few shots I checked and there was just a slight breeze. I'm gessing maybe I need to have the app running on my phone to get more accurate wind readings? Other than that the watch performed flawlessly. I even forgot to confirm my score on hole 12 and after I teed off on 13 it prompted me to confirm my score and putts from the previous hole after confirming my club selection for that tee shot.
- FallenSaber, Shrek74, TSauer and 6 others
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I've played yellow balls for the past 20 years. I'm like you, I lose white balls in the air most of the time. I'm really liking the yellow Oncore Elixr balls I have been playing recently. They probably have the brightest yellow I have ever seen.
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I spent some time last night working with the swing tempo feature. I didn't even know this was on the watch, but it seems like a great tool. I will definitely be spending more time on that in the future.
I have my Thursday night league tonight and then a member guest this weekend that includes a practice round tomorrow, so I should be very familiar with the S70 by Monday.
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Great stuff so far. I am 95% sure that this will be my next golf purchase, I really appreciate all of the input.
- Woody83, Bad Golfer, Fongle and 1 other
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I got my 1st 9 holes in with the S70 last night and it did not disappoint. I locked onto the GPS satelites in under 5 seconds! I could not believe how fast it found my course. The other notable standout on this watch is tha battery life. After 48 hours hours and 9 holes of golf, I'm still at 83% battery. I didn't have the stat tracking turned on so it was not asking me which club I hit, but it did track my shots and I was able to edit them in after the round.
- goaliewales14, FallenSaber, Shrek74 and 4 others
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My streak of rounds in the 30's was snapped last night. I knew it was going to be a tough night as we were on the back and I was on 4 hours of sleep. I actually played fine other than my iron ballstriking was just awful. I managed a 41 which is not terrible for me on the back, but it was still disappointing.
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I gamed the originals for a few years befor going all in on forgiveness. Beautiful irons though, I can see why they remain so popular.
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- Popular Post
- Popular Post
Introduction:
Let me start with a big thank you to Garmin and MGS for this opportunity, I am super excited to be selected! I am 49 and have been playing golf since I was 15. I didn't play any formal golf growing up and didn't get serious about golf until 12 or 13 years ago. I am not a long hitter, but if I'm playing from around 6000 yards, I usually have a chance to break 80. I am located about an hour east of St Louis and play 2 leagues through the week and usually at least once on the weekend. I also have a simulator in my pole barn, so I hit balls out there most days when I'm not at the course.
For the past 3 golf seasons, I have used the Shotscope V3 watch, so I will be doing a lot of direct comparisons. I also use a Bushnell Tour V5, so I will be checking the yardages of all 3 units. I wear a Galaxy watch 3 was my everyday watch and have been looking for a watch with enough features to be my every day watch as well as my gof watch. I had watched several youtube videos about the Garmin S70 prior to this testing as it seemed to check all of the boxes. I am really looking forward to the hole maps and extra details the S70 provides as well as the virtual caddy feature. I am usually pretty good with club selection, but a 2nd opinion never hurts!
Unboxing:
Some of the other testers got shipment notifications yesterday, but I did not. Imagine my surprise when I got home from work yesterday to a small box sitting on my kitchen table.
In the box you'll find the watch, user manual, and charging cord. The charging cord is a proprietary connection on 1 end and USB C on the other. It does not come with a charging block which is not suprising in this day and age, but I don't have a USB C charger so it is a bit of an inconvenience. I do have a USB C port in my truck, so I plugged it in there to charge. The watch was already fully charged, so I downloaded the Garmin app and started setting it up.
Here is a picture of the S70 next to my Galaxy S3. It has a 2mm larger face and looks every bit as premium as the S3. While setting it up there were 12 watch faces to choose from and an add more button that showed 2 more faces. I don't know if more faces can be added as of this writing, but there was a decent variety included out of the box. Once you select a face, they are very customizable. You can choose from several different data points depending on your needs and change all of the color features to what suits your eye. I set up the notifications and was able to select which notifications I wanted sent to the watch. At first it was sending everything, so my phone was going off everytime I got an email which is a lot. I was glad I could continue to get texts and phone call notifications without getting emails. I am not a hardcore smart watch user by any means, but so far the S70 does everything my old watch was doing. I had a busy night last night, so I didn't get into it much past the basic setup. I have my Tuesday night golf league tonight and I am excited to see how it handles on the course.
Final Review
First Impressions (8 out of 10)
The Approach S70 is the latest in a long line of golf watches from Garmin. This model has an upgraded AMOLED screen and builds on the S62 platform by adding even more sensors and health monitoring options this time around.
The screen is gorgeous as advertised and seems to be the major upgrade from the previous model. I do not have experience with the S62, but you can see in the stock photos that the S70 AMOLED screen is much more colorful and detailed than the MIP display on the S62. I initially had issues with seeing the screen outside, but it turned out to be a faulty backlight on my original watch. Luckily, Garmin took care of me and replaced it. I work in manufacturing and understand that sometimes things happen, and small defects can make it out the door, but I would consider this a critical failure as it basically made the watch unusable outside. (-2 Points)
The health monitoring sensors seem to work as they should. I am not a workout guy, so I did not try the numerous workout activities available on the S70. I tried wearing it at night so I could see the data and make use of the body battery feature, but I sleep better without having anything on my hand or wrists, so I only did that a few nights.
Aesthetics (10 out of 10)
I loved the look of the S70 right out of the box. Coming from a Samsung Galaxy watch 3 as my every day watch the S70 had a similar style so I was right at home. I have the 47mm version which fits my wrist perfectly, although Garmin does offer a 42mm version for those with smaller wrists.
Out of the box there were about a dozen watch faces to choose from, but once you download the Garmin Connect IQ app onto your phone there are hundreds more to choose from. You can customize the layout and color scheme of the faces till your heart’s content. The Connect IQ app also has many apps available for the S70. Everything from workout tools to garage door openers. If you can think of it, it’s probably there.
The S70 is also built like a tank... well, a lightweight tank. It seems to be very durable and extremely well made but is still light enough to be worn without interfering with my golf swing. The included silicone band looks great and very comfortable, but is also very durable so the S70 can be worn during pretty much any activity you find yourself partaking in. One thing in particular about the band is the loop that holds the excess band in place has a nub in it so it locks into the band securely. This might be a common feature in sports watches, but I have never seen that before. I see no signs of any wear at this point and expect to get several years of use out of the Garmin S70.
The Numbers (15 out of 20)
The yardage numbers from the S70 are very consistent with what I am used to seeing on my ShotScope V3. Some holes they were dead on with each other and other holes there would be a few yards separating them. I would attribute the variance on how the hole was mapped by each company, but I have a friend who also has a V3, and we have seen up to 5 yards of difference between our V3’s on the same hole so it could just be a variable of using GPS. That’s why I ultimately depend on my Bushnell Tour V5 range finder for precise distances for approach shots into the green. (-1 point) Where the S70 had a huge advantage was the ability to move pin locations to match what I was seeing from the laser range finder.
The ”plays like” distance is another nice feature I found very useful. There were times when it was giving me wind readings that were definitely not consistent with what I was feeling so I still used my own judgement in those cases.
Another favorite of mine is being able to check layup yardages for hazards. While I love my range finder for shooting pins, I never quite trusted the numbers I would get when trying to shoot the ground in front of a pond. With the S70 I can move the anywhere on the map I like whether it is for layup or forced carry shots. I have tried to do this with golf apps on my phone in the past, but the convenience of being able to do it from the watch is hard to beat.
Setup of the watch was straight forward although the included instruction manual was not very user friendly (-1 point). I initially had issues getting wind readings on the watch which ended up being user error on my part as I had not allowed all location permissions when I set it up. Luckily one of the other testers helped me with that issue.
I mentioned earlier that I had issues viewing my original watch outside. The MGS team worked as a mediator between me and the Garmin technical staff, which was a painless experience. I also posted the issue in their forum, but the moderator just responded with a canned response about how AMOLED screens naturally dim in sunlight. (-2 Points) Before I reached out for help, I did countless searches online for this issue hoping I had something wrong in the settings that was causing the problem but could not find anybody else that had seen this problem. Hopefully than means that it was an isolated event and no other watches with this issue have made it out into the wild.
I also had an issue at one course I play where the layout had changed and needed to be remapped. I searched online and found a remapping form to fill out and send to Garmin. I filled out the form and noticed at the top that said they only do updates quarterly. This was a bit disappointing coming from ShotScope that usually remaps courses within 48 hours. (-2 Points)
In my opinion the most impressive feature of the S70 is the battery life. Garmin claims battery life of 16 days in smart watch mode and 20 hours in GPS mode and I believe it. I have used multiple GPS units over the years and could maybe get 2 rounds at most out of them. My 1st week with the S70 I played 63 holes of golf and still had 18% battery left granted that was the watch that had back light issues that that probably saved some battery life. The 1st week with the new watch I played 36 holes and was still at 28% battery at full brightness. My Galaxy Watch 3 must be charged every 2 days. I don’t know how Garmin does it, but it is impressive.
On-Course (18 out of 20)
On the course the S70 really shines. The watch vibrates when a swing is detected prompting you to select the club you used for that shot. Sometimes this happens withing seconds after the shot, but sometimes I am almost to my ball before it prompts me. I am not sure why that happens, but it does. It also prompts you to enter your score and number of putts and penalties after you leave the green. I do have one hole at my course where the tee box if very close to the previous green and the watch will add my drive from that hole to the previous hole if I have not entered my score before I tee off. (-1 Point) Both take just a couple of taps to do and do not interfere with my normal routine.Like I said earlier, I have been a ShotScope V3 user for the past 3 seasons. I am very impressed with the club data I am getting from the S70 without having club tags like the V3. Even with limited rounds on the S70, my numbers are very similar to the V3 numbers I have for the season. I expect the few clubs that are off will normalize once more data is collected. Initially I was missing the chipping and putting data that I got from the ShotScope tags. What I do not miss is all the editing I had to do after each round. Moving putts around to the proper spots on the green and removing or adding shots that were tagged incorrectly is a common occurrence with ShotScope. When I am done with a round with the S70, I am done. The scorecard can be edited right from your watch if you accidently entered the wrong score on a hole during the round. Garmin sells a 3 pack of their CT10 club sensors that I may purchase for my putter and wedges if I decide I can’t live without that data. Shotscope does win in the data department. There are stats and data there that I have not been able to find on my Garmin dashboard. I’m not sure how necessary some of that data is as Garmin seems to give me all the data I need to make good decisions on shot selection. But for the stat lovers out there it is worth noting. (-1 Point)
Garmin Club Stats
ShotScope Club Stats
The Good, the bad, the inbetween (18 out of 20)
I have not yet mentioned the virtual caddie, but that is another feature I find very useful. I am fortunate to have a simulator at my disposal, so I have a very good idea of my club distances. I know a lot of people that seem like they are guessing on club selection several times a round. I think the virtual caddie would be an enormous benefit to that type of golfer. Most of the time it is calling for the same club that I would normally hit, but it has been off a club either way a few times.
The S70 is also very quick to lock onto the GPS satellites. It has never taken more 30 seconds to lock on and usually its under 10 seconds. On an overcast day my old watch could take several minutes to find the satellites.
One last feature I want to mention is the Tempo Training. I have always considered my self as having a smooth swing, but I really struggle to get the 3:1 tempo they are looking for. I am always looking for ways to improve my swing and I never had a way to measure tempo before. I plan on continuing to work on my tempo with this feature as I feel it is a very useful tool.
There is not much bad to say about the S70, it is a great piece of tech. Some of the user interfaces could be combined as I have 3 different apps on my phone for this watch. (Garmin Golf, Garmin Connect, and Garmin Connect IQ) I know I’m getting older, but I still consider myself somewhat tech savvy, but this confused me for a while. (-1 Point)
I would also like to see a manual chipping and putting option for those that want short game stats without buying the club sensors. There is a manual putting option on my V3 that is actually more accurate that using the putting tag on the green. Once you’re on the green you simply hit a button on the watch to tag your putt. Simple but effective. (-1 Point)
Play it or Trade it? (18 out of 20)
This is a tough one for me as I really love everything about this watch except for one thing and that is the price. I am absolutely going to continue using it, but I’m not sure I would buy it at $700. (- 2 Points) I feel like you need to be both a power smart watch user and an avid stat loving golfer to justify that price. For me, I want all the golf side has to offer but would be happy with just notifications from my phone and the changeable faces for the smart watch side of things.
Conclusion
The Garmin Approach S70 is a great smart watch and an amazing golf watch all wrapped up into one. It also has battery life for days unlike any smart/GPS device I have ever seen. The price point is high, but if you are looking for an all-in-one solution for your smart watch / golf watch needs this is the watch for you.
Thanks again to MyGolfSpy and Garmin for this amazing opportunity. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and hope I was informative and helpful to those that followed along.
Final Score (87 out of 100)
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I have been gaming a Bloodline Vale for a couple of months now and absolutely love it. I bought it because I liked the alignment aid on the head and thought it would help me. I didn't really care about the stand-up feature and didn't really care for the ultra light weight grip they used so it would stand up on its own. I replaced the grip, so it doesn't stand up on its own anymore, but the swing weight is still really heavy which has been working great for me. It's also the most solid feeling putter head at impact that I've ever rolled.
Garmin S70 Golf GPS Watch - 2023 Forum Review
in Forum Testing Reviews
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You were right. I reinstalled the Garmin Connect app and when it got to the weather setup it said I needed to set my location to always allow for the weather widget to work properly. I must have missed that the 1st time I installed the app, because it seems to be working correctly now. Thanks for the tip.