Garmin S70 Golf GPS Watch - 2023 Forum Review

[Josh Ross]

Awesome @goaliewales14! It has stormed every day since the watch arrived. Today's tee time was cancelled, trying again tomorrow!

[FallenSaber]

First day on a course. Started rough. Had the first tee time for the Torrey North Back 9. Someone new was checking people in... couldn't find my tee time. Went to the starter and he found my tee time. Got everything worked out then had to immediately go and tee off. I started the golf activity on the app and it started me on the 13th hole instead of the 10th. I think this led to a user error, based on an app error where my score card still hasn't uploaded onto the app.

Overall, I was very happy with the watch on the course. I compared it to my GRINT app and the yardage were on point or a yard off. I'd imagine the $699 dollar watch was the slightly more accurate option over the free GRINT app. The plays like feature really only came into play on hole 15 where it provided a 22 yard drop based on elevation as shown in the video below. For step counters who walk with a push cart, there was a 3k difference between Samsung Health and Garmin. Yesterday, there was a 2k difference in favor of the Garmin over Samsung Health without a physical activity. I assume the difference today was based primarily on how often I used my left had to push the cart. As the day ends, the difference is only 1,200 steps in favor of Samsung Health.

 

[Josh Ross]

Good start, @FallenSaber! Playing Torrey is super cool, heck of a way to debut the watch.

[FallenSaber]

Thanks! A spoil of being a San Diego resident. The back 9 for Torrey North is only $36 for us locals. At that price, I'd arguably be losing money if I didn't play it. Haha

[Emag315]

Played the South Course 2 weeks prior to the US Open and it was spectacular… that 6 inch made me want to pick up PickeBall I am sold on the watch as soon as MGS members get a discount 

[KC Golf]

22 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:

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

 

The images on the watch look great.
It has all the details you would want and more.  Is the brightness eating into the battery life?

[Dlaw13]

On 8/8/2023 at 5:40 AM, Tx-Ping said:

Congratulations to all who were selected, look forward to your reviews.

Congrats testers and I am looking forward to your use results.

[RwsGolf1]

Congrats all!  Love this site except it is expensive, LOL.  We get all of these opportunities but, since I have not been chosen, after I do all the research, I end up purchasing.  So far, I have purchased the “Hack Motion” and the upgrade.  If you are technical, the HM is great!  I have given a couple of putting lessons with it.

Edited August 26, 2023 by RwsGolf1

[goaliewales14]

On 8/11/2023 at 3:38 PM, revkev said:

One last question from me - I'm assuming you can turn the notifications off?  Being a Pastor I receive communications 24/7.  Wearing a device where they pop up would stink and it would be all the worse if it were the device I was using as my golf GPS.  

@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.  

 

6 hours ago, KC Golf said:

The images on the watch look great.
It has all the details you would want and more.  Is the brightness eating into the battery life?

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!

[FallenSaber]

11 hours ago, Emag315 said:

Played the South Course 2 weeks prior to the US Open and it was spectacular… that 6 inch made me want to pick up PickeBall I am sold on the watch as soon as MGS members get a discount 

South course is great! But in the build up to Farmers or the Open, the roughs get insane. I played 2 weeks after Farmers and I saw exactly where my ball went which is rare for me and everyone else saw where it landed yet no one could find it.

[FallenSaber]

7 hours ago, KC Golf said:

The images on the watch look great.
It has all the details you would want and more.  Is the brightness eating into the battery life?

I've been wearing my watch pretty much every second of every day, minus when I'm in the shower, since I got it last Wednesday. I played 9 holes yesterday and it only dropped from 85% to 76%. It is currently at 62%. The battery life on this thing is absolutely ridiculous. My golf buddy/neighbor wears an apple watch and his will drop over 30% over 9 holes.

[FallenSaber]

Did my first run with the watch. It was a short 1.5ish mile run but an intense run with a big .6 mile incline to finish. For those looking to this watch as a multi-sport watch, so far it's awesome. I connected my Nike Run Club, Strava, and Relive accounts to it. I use to have to start everything for my runs on my phone then start my run. Now, I just start the run activity on the watch and it'll automatically upload the run and all the data for the run to all 3 apps. This is very helpful for me, especially for races since I try to fundraise for fallen soldiers via running. For longer races, I would only choose two apps, usually NRC and Relive since running all 3 would kill my phone battery. I was skeptical that it would work and all 3 would automatically get the data but it did work flawlessly. The only thing I had to do was update my shoes in the NRC app. It also automatically uploads golf activities to Strava and Relive. See below images for details.

 

I think the Relive app is really cool. Feel free to reach out if you have questions.

[Parshooter36]

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.

[goaliewales14]

55 minutes ago, Parshooter36 said:

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.

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

[goaliewales14]

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

[Josh Ross]

I finally got out in between storms today! Sitting in the dark currently with no power and on 7% battery so I'm gonna be brief until tomorrow.

I played a course I'm fairly familiar with and know the yardages pretty well. I had my Bushnell with me so I could compare the slope yardage with what the watch gave me. It was always within a yard and often spot on. I didn't have any issues at all with distances and the course looked great on the screen. 

One of the holes was a short dogleg par 4. Hit a 7 iron off the tee and drew it a little too much. Was left with this 114 yard approach and hit it to three feet, one of two that scared the hole today.

One thing that was super impressive compared to my old SkyCaddie was how quickly it found the course. With it, I typically would start the search when I parked and it would usually have it by the time I was teeing off. With the Garmin, I started the search and it buzzed with the course name before I even got out of the vehicle.

I also have the issue where my glove doesn't fit exactly right due to the watch and I thought it may bother me but I honestly never noticed. I had no issues with pushing buttons inadvertently and I love that it automatically kept notifications from coming in to the watch while golfing.

[Parshooter36]

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.

[KC Golf]

14 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:

@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!

That’s very impressive!

[KC Golf]

13 hours ago, FallenSaber said:

I've been wearing my watch pretty much every second of every day, minus when I'm in the shower, since I got it last Wednesday. I played 9 holes yesterday and it only dropped from 85% to 76%. It is currently at 62%. The battery life on this thing is absolutely ridiculous. My golf buddy/neighbor wears an apple watch and his will drop over 30% over 9 holes.

The battery life is really impressive

Thank you for the feedback!!

[Parshooter36]

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.

[Josh Ross]

Just to comment on battery life even more, I've had mine on since Tuesday and it has never come off except to shower. I've played a round of golf, have tons of notifications coming in, have it set up to run different health scans throughout the night, and in six days I've dropped from 90% to 47%. And there's a ton of screen time in there too because I played with it for a long time when seeing what all it could do and changing things around. Super impressed by the battery life for sure.

Also, I felt sick Saturday night and had a terrible time sleeping. I didn't toss and turn, but I woke up probably 10 times and couldn't sleep. Sure enough, the watch gave me a sleep score of 50 which it deemed Poor. There's a Body Battery function that basically tracks your energy like a phone battery. With such a poor sleep score, my "charge" showed 51% when I got up yesterday and was almost depleted after golf. It was incredibly accurate because I was beyond drained and felt terrible afterwards. Just cool how it keeps up with that stuff.

[Shrek74]

14 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:

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. 

I have the same issue with my S5 Golf watch. I've just gotten used to pushing it left of my wrist bone to allow space for my glove and to prevent any buttons from being accidentally pressed. I wear mine a little loose since it doesn't need to be super tight to get all the health readings. This allows me to move it up my wrist when I need to.

[PrismFlopper]

14 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:

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

Have you notices a like uncomfortable feeling in the swing or pinching from how large the face of the watch is?

[goaliewales14]

3 hours ago, PrismFlopper said:

Have you notices a like uncomfortable feeling in the swing or pinching from how large the face of the watch is?

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.

[Josh Parker]

5 minutes ago, goaliewales14 said:

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 wear my watch playing but I'm a lefty and wear it on my non glove hand for that reason. Took a min to adjust to that side but don't ever have any issues 

[PrismFlopper]

1 hour ago, goaliewales14 said:

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 had issues with my apple watch occasionally getting messed up from the strap hitting the button so i just reversed the watch button so i dont have that issue. Is there any similar function that flips the screen?

[goaliewales14]

3 hours ago, jdparker said:

I wear my watch playing but I'm a lefty and wear it on my non glove hand for that reason. Took a min to adjust to that side but don't ever have any issues 

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.

2 hours ago, PrismFlopper said:

I had issues with my apple watch occasionally getting messed up from the strap hitting the button so i just reversed the watch button so i dont have that issue. Is there any similar function that flips the screen?

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. 

[FallenSaber]

I'll follow this one up but at the Orioles @ Padres game and very impressed with the personalization of the watch! Made sure to update my watch face for the game! The watch display is far more customizable than I previously thought. 

[Josh Ross]

5 hours ago, PrismFlopper said:

I had issues with my apple watch occasionally getting messed up from the strap hitting the button so i just reversed the watch button so i dont have that issue. Is there any similar function that flips the screen?

I haven't seen anything either. They have the 18 holes around the watch face and Approach S70 text that are actually part of the watch, not the display, so it may look off if you did flip it. You make a good case for it being a possibility though.

[FallenSaber]

11 hours ago, PrismFlopper said:

Have you notices a like uncomfortable feeling in the swing or pinching from how large the face of the watch is?

I wear my watch a little higher and I have not had ant issues at all with it feeling uncomfortable during my swing or pinching. Frankly, the watch is so lightweight that I hardly noticed it's there. My glove doesn't interfere with it at all. The 47mm sounds very big but it actually feels smaller on the wrist than my 44mm Breitling. Of course the Breitling weighs 5+ times heavier than the Garmin and is thicker.

8 hours ago, goaliewales14 said:

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.

That's interesting. How tight do you wear the watch or how tight is it up against your glove?