Garmin Vivoactive 4 Lifestyle watch golf features

[Bourbon_Soaked]

A couple of years ago, I got sick of the battery life of my android watches and jealous of the battery life my wife got off her garmin tri specific watch, got myself the Garmin vivoactive 4. I have used it for tracking hikes, mountian biking, road biking and indoor bike trainer sessions and the watch does a great job. I wear it all day every day just as part of my every day for notifications from my phone and honestly haven't had a ringer on my phone in years. On the rare days I take it off and leave it at home, it feels like I have lost one of my senses. And it is a battle tank. I have hit it on many many door jams and lock plates and no worse for wear. 

It also has a golf function which I have come to love. For the last couple years I would use it while golfing to give me yardages to the front, middle, and back of green and didn't really explore any features really beyond that. This year I have explored more of these other functions and last week found a buried setting that changed everything.

It does let you pick from various pin locations on the green but I am not good enough to be able to hit anywhere specific. I am always going for the safe shot, center green. 

I am a bad golfer. But it's a monkey on my back I can't shake. While I would love to spend money on a fancy golf specific watch, that money would be much better spend on a lesson or 12. But to have something I already own be this great? I'm here for it. Here are my thoughts on using the watch for golf. 

First things first. The watch does not come preloaded with courses. You need to open the Garmin connect app and download the course prior to your round. No big deal, it takes less than 30 seconds and you never need to download it again. Then you go to your watch, select the golf activity, wait for it to connect to gps, select your course (the closest ones will be at the top) and your tees and away you go. You also get a prompt that asks if you want to keep your score on your watch. I always do and you will get some extra information on your game if you do. 

And you want to talk about easy to see. Garmin uses some sunlight visible display that makes it even easier to see in direct sunlight. You will never have to worry about glare or sun or shade or whatever. It's great. It's like one of those e ink displays. 

Yardage readings are dead on accurate and fast. So much so that those I typically golf with no longer use their phone apps or range finders unless its a drastic up or down hill lie for slope. There can be a slight lag on the yardages updating if you roll up in a cart fast it takes a moment to update yardages on where you currently are but by time you hop out the cart and get to your bag it will be updated. I can't express how nice this is when you play with a group as slow as the one I typically play with is. Roll up. Look at your wrist. grab the right club. Pull it left of the green. Then off you go. It's great. 

When you are done with the hole it asks you what your score was, you adjust up or down from par (always up for me.) And move on to the next hole

And for years this is all I have used it for and it has been flawless. 

Then I explored it a bit more and got lots more. By hitting the top button on the side of the watch, it opens up the golf menu. 

Here you can edit your scorecard, find yardages to and to clear hazards, get direction to pin, find last shot distance, get layup distances, and pull up current score. 

All super useful features, everything accurate to the yard as far as I can tell. All for the low low cost of something I already had. 

Then recently I found buried in a setting for the golf app in the phone settings (not the app settings) for tracking shots. I turned it on and it blew my mind. 

Now after every shot, the watch asks me what club I just hit. While a little fiddly, it is something I can select real quick less than a couple seconds, as I am putting my club in the bag. This unlocks a boat load of post round data on the garmin golf app on my phone as far as statistics. 

And this feature works.....pretty ok! It has some trouble picking up putts and some of those shorter chips and pitch shots around the green. I just don't think those are big enough swings to register them as shots. 

But whoo boy is there a lot of information in the phone app on how bad my game is. 

Opening up the phone app you can see lots of information. Its more than I know what to do with. All of it can be broken down to individual round information and overall lifetime information on your stats. 

So much information! 

Information on chipping and putting can be collected by adding the CT10 trackers and tying them in. You can buy the whole club set and not have to worry about selecting clubs on your watch. Or you can probably get away with the starter set on your putter and wedges and selecting your longer clubs on your watch. 

Battery life:

When using the watch in everyday life, no gps just as my watch, it lasts for 5-7 days on a charge. Using it for golf, i have done 36 holes and still had 40% life. I think you can easily play 3 or 4 full rounds before needing to charge it up. And it charges fast. I typically go from 20% to full if I plug it in while getting ready in the morning. It is kind of a fiddly charger but I bought a fist full of usb-c to garmin charge adapters and keep them attached to my most used cables so I can always get a boost if needed. 

Cost:

Full retail is $329 but it goes on sale for $250 or less. You can get a refurb for under $150 and like I said, this thing is a battle tank. 

Conclusion:

I love this watch. I love these features. I don't know how much all the performance stats help me out but the yardages, hazard and layup info I use all the time. I do like the club tracking information, I look forward to using it more and more and collecting more information on my clubs. I know the yardages help. I will probably end up with at least a starter set of CT10 sensors on the wedges and putter. And from what I understand all this information is integrated with the R10, which I think, especially in Michigan where it snows half the year, being able to keep all your indoor, outdoor golf information together would be great. 

While you do get additional features like hole overviews and whatnot with more expensive or dedicated golf watches, I am very happy with this watch and the features it provides for golf. At least until I can cut my handicap in half. 

 

[Bourbon_Soaked]

sorry about the huge photos. 

[StrokerAce]

Great review! This sounds like an excellent watch and I love that it's not just a "golf watch" but that golf is a feature of it.

THAT is what I'm looking for. I'd like a smartwatch that can do golf and not a smartwatch and a golf watch.

Battery performance sounds promising as well. I'm going to have to put this one on my short list.

[VernL4]

Excellent writeup @Bourbon_Soaked ! I'm also a Garmin advocate. I love all the stats that I can see after a round. I love the shot tracking. I can look at previous rounds and remember good shots, and I have the info to prove it to friends that were not with me.  I have the Fenix 7. It serves me well for activities other than golf- like mountain biking and hiking. Would you be interested in adding me as a connection on Garmin?