goaliewales14

As my golf season is starting to come to a close for the year, I'm still continuing to take the Approach S70 out on the course with me. In one of my rounds, I had a buddy that used to work in the golf retail space wear it to give his review as he's very familiar with the market space. I gave him a quick tutorial on how to work it and then left all of my opinions to myself to make sure it was unbiased. He was very impressed with the clarity of the screen. He wanted more out of the graphics though. He wanted to be able to see all of the trees and other obstacles on the course that some of the apps that he was using from his phone. He said his price point for the watch was like $200-$300. I would like to note that he didn't have any issues with the watch trying to shut off by hitting the glove. It did hit his watch, but nothing was impacted. From my side, it still seems that the price point continues to be the biggest barrier for the S70. Like I mentioned, I will definitely continue to use it much like a Bushnell Wingman wrapped around my Bluetooth speaker.

I'm not saying that Vokeys are the best wedges, I'm saying that they are the standard that everyone uses to compare or as a starting ground. Much like the Prov1 golf ball. Is the ProV1 the best golf ball? It may or may not be and I completely agree that everyone needs to test to find what works for them the best. When a company launches a new golf ball, they use the ProV1 as a comparison for the numbers. Take one of the latest golf ball releases, PXG. When they released their golf ball, they used numbers from ProV1 to say we spin more/less and have higher/lower ball speeds. If something were to happen and ProV1 wouldn't have released a new model since the last golf ball test, would that data have been meaningful as a comparison? Just like is this wedge test the most meaningful as possible leaving out the industry leader in wedges regardless of when it was released. The reason I wanted to create this tread was to have these discussions because while you can go pull the 2022 results and flip back and forth to compare, you may not have all the same parameters as MGS naturally refines its process year over year. One thing that I love with the MGS community is all of our backgrounds and discussions. If we can make the data more meaningful to the end consumer then I believe it's our job to have those discussions. As an example, I believe it was a few years back that MGS wanted to start adding in the previous year's "best driver" in the next year's test. For one to show, do you gain the extra "30 yards with a new driver" and two as a leveling playing field.

I definitely get that things not being included are always a topic of every test, and that the SM9's were released March 11, 2022, but not having a Vokey in a wedge test is like leave ProV1 out of a ball test. Vokey is the standard in wedges the same as the ProV1 is the standard in golf balls.

I just saw that MGS released it's 2023 Best Wedge results, and I'll link the article below, but I was curious if anyone has any insights as to why Vokey wasn't included on this test. BEST GOLF WEDGES OF 2023 Also were there any wedges that shocked you in this test?

Thank you for posting that! I was actually just about ready to retrack my statement saying that there isn't a version out there and of course an ad comes up for the Galaxy Watch Golf Edition It's currently on sale for $420 without any trade-ins.

My Galaxy watch is 46mm and was one of the reasons I went with the 47mm S70. The other reasons are because I wanted the larger screen to be able to manipulate the course overlay for the GPS. If I would have gone down to the 42mm my finger would have covered the majority of the screen making manipulation very hard. I've never worn the Galaxy watch on the golf course as there aren't any GPS apps to my knowledge that work to display on a Galaxy watch like the S70. While the glove interference did not make a positive impact on my review, I still would have drawn the same conclusion. I don't believe the Garmin Approach S70 is worth the $700 price tag. For me a smart watch should eliminate needing to look at your phone. The S70 doesn't fulfill that need on the golf course, or off the course. To get accurate club data a person would have to have their phone out, or purchase the full set of sensors for an additional $300. The same could be done with Arccos for $200 or free with purchase of new golf clubs. If you would want another GPS watch, you would be able to do Shot Scope for $300.

My final review is up as well!! Thank you again for this amazing opportunity!!

All I'm going to comment is maybe wait and see my final review

Must have been operator error on my part then. Glad it worked!

I'm in the same boat as @Josh Ross in that my rangefinder is a Bushnell V6 shift

Have any of the other testers tried starting on a random hole? I was in a 1-man scramble over the weekend and it was a shotgun start. My group started on 13. When I went to go start the round, I was able to change the hole to 13, but it wouldn't automatically go to the next hole after I entered my score like normal rounds. I had to keep choosing the next hole through the menu each time until I got back to the first hole.

As you know the watch has definitely interfered with my glove and I can't move it up much more unless I get a new strap

That's so weird that yours is that dim with the maxed out. If it keeps being dull, would you be able to factory reset it just to see if some random feature was turned on?

So glad I'm not losing my mind on that issue!

I did have weather issues during my last round. It was registering 0 mph winds at times, but I had at least 10-15 mph while I was playing

I just went to go grab my glove and this is what it looks like if I take my time both putting on the watch and the glove. The glove gets extremely close to the power off button. (I do take my glove off after each shot) You can also see that there's not much room left for me to adjust the watch to make it any looser to allow me to slide up much more. I'm wearing the watch just left (on my left hand) of my wrist bone, so where you'd typically wear a watch.

I did a few practice swings on my non glove hand and because I try to have a bit of Dustin Johnson hands at the top, it does interfere with my swing. I didn't see any ability to flip the screen on the S70. I went through all the settings and did wear it to see if it auto flipped, but it didn't. Maybe some of the fellow testers could see if I missed anything on this feature! The one suggestion that I'm gonna try is what @Shrek74 does is just push it up a bit.

Honestly I was really nervous about that, but no I haven't. I have tested it out hitting different types of shots to see if I would get uncomfortable and it's been great from that standpoint. I believe what is causing it to try and shut off is the velcro strap is pushing the part of the glove that I can't tuck under the watch into the buttons. That would be the only "pinching" that I have issues with right now.

I was able to get out and play another round today with the S70. It was kind of a bag of mixed emotions in terms of feedback. The biggest issue for me today continues to be how my glove fits. I'm guessing I need to wear this up a few inches rather than my wrist. You can see in the picture below the glove just doesn't fit. The biggest problem is during my swing it kept buzzing because one of the buttons was getting pressed to ask if I want to shut it off. This led to some very terrible shots due to losing concentration mid swing. The other issue is the "play as" distance was off probably about a full club today. It wasn't picking up the wind gusts. I wanted to take the "play as" number just to test as it was very accurate the first time and I was playing the same course. The good news is that I definitely was able to do the yardage to a specific point a lot easier today. Just took a bit of practice. The main trick is that if you press anywhere on the hole layout, it automatically takes you to the green. There is a slider on the right side of the watch face to zoom in and out. If you zoom out then drag to a specific area you want to know the yardage, you're able to select it that way. Next time The really big bright spot in the round was on hole 11. I had 110 to the pin and here's the approach view of the hole and where the shot ended up....yes that pitch mark is from my shot

Did your yardages have triangles next to them? If so, you just have to tap them it should go back to the actual yardages.

@revkev - Wanted to test this out for you today. It seems like while the "play golf" feature is active, all notifications are turned off. I had a few people text me randomly during my round today and the only notification was on my phone itself. Nothing actually came through the watch while I was playing, but it will come through when I'm not playing. After playing 2 rounds and having it on for close to 8-10 hours, I'm running at about 76%. The watch does seem to have a pretty good battery life. Hope that helps!

I was able to get out and play my first round with the watch yesterday! While I was out there I was using my rangefinder, Garmin, and GHIN for the hole overview to compare everything. Initial thoughts are: The watch is very light weight and it's hard to notice that you're wearing it Screen is very easy to read Step counter did not seem calibrated correctly Taking on and off my glove was an issue The "Plays like" feature saved me! Need to work with hole view feature. Had issues working it

I'm getting in my first round tomorrow with my Garmin!

I could be wrong as I haven't gotten fully into it, but I believe you'd need to get the Approach CT10 to put into your grips like Arccos for all of that to work the best.

Introduction Hello fellow spies! I want to thank MGS and Garmin for this amazing testing opportunity! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mike, or Goaliewales14. I live in Indiana with my amazing wife of almost 11 years. I have been playing golf for about 9 years now. Over those years, I have had some of the best experiences including review things such as the Spornia SPG8 XL hitting net and Martin Chuck’s Tour Striker Academy. This is the first year where I’m actively getting into tournaments while even becoming a member of a course for the very first time. I even won my first ever scramble and the very next day placed T-10 at a brand new event! This has really forced me to step up my game which leads me to the Garmin Approach S70. Testing I have always been curious about the Garmin watches, but never pulled the trigger on one to try it out. I currently use an array of different distance measuring devices that include, Bushnell V6 Shift, Arccos, and the GHIN app. Most of the time I just stick to my rangefinder as I’ve played most of the courses around here, but if it’s a new course, that’s when I break out GPS. I want to get a clear picture of the hole in my mind before teeing off and also make sure I know what my carry distances I need to be clear of trouble. For my review, I’ll start out on my home course to test the yardages and functionality. I’ll be comparing the yardages to all of the other devices to ensure accuracy. To me distance accuracy will be the #1 most important feature. After that, I want to make sure wearing a watch doesn’t cause a problem. I’ve never worn anything on my wrist, so I don’t know how that will feel. While we’re completing this review, please make sure to check out the review that MGS already did! MGS Garmin Approach S70 Review First Impressions (9 out of 10) After reading the MGS article and doing a little homework online, I was nothing but excited to received the S70. The list of features on this watch goes on for days! When selecting which watch I wanted to review, there was only one choice for me, black 47mm. You can see from the picture above that there were three color choices, black, gray, and white. The other two options are only available in 42mm. Upon unboxing, the watch was perfect. The black and red was a perfect and the fit was good. The watch is very light weight compared to my Samsung Galaxy watch. Getting the watch setup took multiple tries as the watch and app kept not being in sync. After two to three tries I was able to get it set up and working. The watch has a ton of customizable features that lead to hours of fun playing around. Aesthetics (7 out of 10) As I mentioned above, the fit was good, but what I ran into was my glove kept hitting buttons. There were a few times during my swing where the watch vibrated in my backswing because my glove pushed the power off button. That to me is a huge downside for a watch that’s supposed to be a golf watch. The huge upside to the Approach S70 is the amount of customization you can do with the watch face. You can take any picture and make it a background while adding in different features such as battery life, steps, and calendar date. The Numbers (15 out of 20) The most important feature on a GPS watch are the yardages. The non adjusted yardages were very accurate when compared to GHIN, Arccos, and confirmed with a Bushnell Shift V6 rangefinder. I actually loved having the front/middle/back numbers on all of the holes. This allowed me to know exactly what number I needed to get to the green. When I’m having a rough round, I just want to hit the middle of the green rather than actually try to hit the proper tier. I did find myself using the rangefinder along with the S70 to confirm the pin position. The yardages that were hit or miss were the “plays as” yardages. The S70 is supposed to factor in weather and other factors to give you an adjusted yardage. There were a few times it was spot on, but others when it wouldn’t register or completely off making you a full club long or short at best. On-Course (15 out of 20) Being that this was the first time that I’ve ever worn a watching while playing golf, I knew there would be an adjustment period. The first thing I wanted to check was does it affect my swing? The answer was yes and no. The watch didn’t hinder my swing at all, but as I mentioned earlier, my glove did hit the power button causing it to vibrate during my swing. The new routine that I adopted with the S70 that made me better was to shoot the pin with my rangefinder on all of my approach shots and then check the S70 to see where it’s located on the green. This allowed me to make a more informed decision on where the safe miss was for the shot. If I only had a few yards to the back of the green, then I would just go for the middle number and club up to allow for it to release back to the pin. The routine that I kept trying to adopt was getting carry yardage over a fairway bunker or to have certain distance into a pin. While the S70 can do this, the functionality seemed a bit labored especially compared to other apps out there on your phone. Whenever you trying to get a number, you had to zoom in and out to find the spot you wanted and if you drug your finger on the screen, the cursor read a bit ahead of where you’re actually pointing. The Good, the bad, the in-between (10 out of 20) For this section I’m going to focus on the “lifestyle” side of the S70. For me the whole point of a smart watch is to not look at your phone. With the S70, I felt like I was able to view things like text messages, but if I wanted to reply, I had to get out my phone. With my first-generation Galaxy watch, I can reply directly on the watch. That’s a watch that is five years older than the S70 and was half the price. The other thing I noticed was that the calibration of the step count and heart rate were always above that of my Galaxy watch. For example, when walking from my car in the parking lot to the clubhouse, which is approximately 400 feet at max, it recorded close to 1000 steps. The average stride is around 2 – 2.5 feet. That would make it 200 steps at maximum. I did record my height and all other factors into the app correctly before allowing the step counter to activate. Play it or Trade it? (10 out of 20) With everything considered, the S70 will not replace my Galaxy watch in my normal day-to-day. With the interference with my golf glove, I will not be wearing the watch on the golf course. However, what I did find out I like is making it a fancy version of the Bushnell Wingman. I have wrapped it around my Bluetooth speaker that I use on the golf course and check my yardages for my approach shots, or if I need to lay up. Conclusion Overall, is the S70 worth the $700 price tag? My thoughts are no. If it were up to me to go out and buy this after this review, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather have my Galaxy or Apple watch and just use one of the GPS apps that are out there in the stores. At the end of the day, it won’t replace my rangefinder either. Final Score (66 out of 100)