Unofficial Shot Scope V2 Review

[Alf. S]

About me.

 

57 year old very keen golfer that's played competitive golf for 17 years. During the summer playing at least 4 rounds a week with A CONGU handicap of 7.8. I have worked in the Electronics industry for 35 years designing and developing Integrated Circuits for Smart Phones, GPS devices, Digital TV, etc. I'm a bit of a technophile with my 1st experience of GPS rangefinders going back to the Skycaddie 2.5 in 2008. I now own  Skycaddie Touch, Garmin Approach G3, Bushnell Neo Ion so I have a pretty good idea of the capability on the market.

 

Having just bought a new set of Srixon Z565 irons and hitting them longer than my old AP1s,  I specifically bought the Shot Scope v2 to help me gain confidence with distance on each club and this review is based on 27 rounds over the last 6 weeks

 

Purchasing:

 

Ordering on-line was easy and efficient, but there always seems to be deals on where you get 10, 15% discount by entering a discount code. I ended up paying £205 with a 10% discount. Box arrived 2 days later. Packaging was robust.

 

Physical appearance of watch:

 

Comparing it to the Bushnell Neo it is larger and a bit more cumbersome, which I would assume is to accommodate the RFID electronics. The micor-USB connector is on the back which can be a little awkward to insert the cable. Aesthetically it does look a bit bulky.

 

Getting Started:

 

1st task is to connect to my PC and get the courses downloaded. The cable that came with the watch didn't seem to be a good fit in to the micro-USB port and kept disconnecting from the PC. I ended up using the one from my Skycaddie. The app downloaded and flagged that a software updated was required prior to course download which took about 15 minutes. The app interface was clear and intuitive.

 

Next was setting up the RFID tags in the clubs, this was straight forward except for my putter which has Superstroke Countercore grip so I couldn't screw in the tag directly.

 

Instructions read off for my 1st round.

 

1st niggle is that when not in GPS or tracking mode i.e. Standby you get no time readout just a big V2 in the middle of the screen. 

 

On Course Use:

 

I play a lot of golf in the evenings, get to the course at about 6pm and play until the light or the weather deteriorates. So I carry and use spikeless shoes so I can park and get on the 1st tee in under 5 minutes. In order for the watch to have found the satellites and initialised this means I have to enable as soon as I get out the car for it to be ready on the 1st tee.

 

I'm long sited and effectively require separate prescriptions for distance and reading. For golf I only wear distance glasses but found the display clear and easy to read. Time font was a bit small but manageable with my old eyesight and no worse that other  rangefinders.

 

GPS measurements, I had my trustee Skycaddie with me and the differences on most holes were insignificant to green centre but to front and back and hazards they could vary. One extreme is the hazard not being there or to the front being a couple of yards out. This also came up in putting stats when I was doing my post analysis. i.e it would think I was off the green for a putt when I was a yard on.

 

The recording pin position and number of putts is something you get use to and there isn't any other way to record this so click and on you go. 

 

Next niggle, lost ball,  the user manual does not cover the menu function or hazards so i muddle through. On checking back on the website the online version doesn't cover them either you need to go into some of the Q&A areas of the website.

 

Round finished time to Sync. I have an iPhone 6, Bluetooth connectivity was really easy, enable the watch, bring up the app, connect, sync. Comparing this to the Skycaddie which I've always found to be unreliable.

 

Data Analysis:

 

The App gives basic high level info but for the detailed analysis you need to log into the website, I use both PC and iPad for this. 

 

Logging in you get a detailed view of the round/rounds you have played with a satellite view of every shot recorded. The RFID tag detection can be a little unreliable so occasionally it will not id a club or shot for me this is 2 or 3 strokes a round. The user manual does state that taking a few practise swings may help this but I usually take one practice then hit. While the round is fresh in memory it is best to go and edit this. I usually go into the round at the 1st hole and just check the data by cycling through the round, then save. It asks you for what tee you played off before you save. I found editing a round on PC easy but on the iPad painful due to the precision (zoom) of the maps and the size of my finger.

 

 

As mentioned above I bought this so I can analyse how far and well I hit individual clubs, the data analysis does not have the flexibility to do this which is  abit of a pain. The performance/tee shots is as close as it gets which gives me a good breakdown mainly of my driver with distance and dispersion and fairways hit but it doesn't do it as a general club performance menu.  In the Tee Shots menu you can select individual shots and go to the round that generated it. This allows you identify outliers and correct

 

I would also like to be able to control which shots are disregarded in the P.Avg and Avg settings. I hit my PW 130 yds my stats at the moment say my longest and average are 133yds and my P.Avg is 67. 

 

The short games analysis I like and find useful but can be distorted by lack of accuracy in the course map.

 

It would also be useful if there was a way to add prevailing wind and ground conditions on post round data. At the moment down wind on bone dry fairways I'm hitting drives 320 yds come the winter it will be 180 yds on the same hole.

 

 

Miscellaneous

 

I had a few teething problems with the watch in my 1st few rounds where 2 rounds were not recorded at all. This seems to have resolved itself. After all the reviews online, I had high expectations for the product and was really frustrated by the loss of data and it not doing what I wanted it to do.

 

Support has been good without excelling.

 

Summary

 

(6 out 10)

 

A product that has potential but needs to polish the offering. Hardware can be unreliable and needs ruggedised. Software analysis can be the big differentiator but needs to be more feature rich.

 

It is only usable on the golf course i.e. can't use it as a watch like other GPS watches

 

Will I keep using it, yes and probably move on the Bushnell Neo Ion.

[Kanoito]

You can use the positional option so the shot distance doesn't affect your averages. Say for example using a PW for a 30 yard pitch instead of 130 yard full swing.

[ole gray]

Well done alfs!   You sound like the perfect person to do these tech type reviews. 

[Jon Brittan]

I bought one at the end of last week. Arrived on Monday while I was away (I ordered it very late in the week) so annoyingly I didn't get to use it for the three rounds I played over the weekend.

 

All set up and will get at least one outing this week and I'll start to add some thoughts.

 

One observation I will make immediately: I use a very obscure putter. In the "My Bag" section they didn't have my putter model listed, so I emailed their support to see if they could add it, expecting it would get done at some point down the line. An hour and a half later I received an email reply to tell me it had been added and I could immediately go to the portal and set my putter up as the correct model.

 

If the rest of the experience is so smooth then they're on to a good thing.

[cksurfdude]

Good user review and very good info! Thx!

[Alf. S]

You can use the positional option so the shot distance doesn't affect your averages. Say for example using a PW for a 30 yard pitch instead of 130 yard full swing.

 

I've only done this through the post round editing, I don't think you can do it during a round (which I wouldn't want anyway). For me it would be good if you could set the P.Avg range for each club in the dashboard. I'm assuming at the moment they use statistical analysis with std deviation to work out P.Avg. With a limited sample size this totally distorts the numbers.

 

If you are adding post round positional data they need to add a club view similar to the tee shot view so you can see the outliers and edit them

[Alf. S]

Latest firmware (4th July 2018) update now gives a time read out.