Trouble with Shot Scope V5 watch

[Marino2112]

There’s been some really great reviews of Shot Scope products on here. Ultimately, the overwhelmingly positive things y’all had to say about Shot Scope led me to purchase a V5 watch and sensors. My experience with this has been absolutely awful. Pretty much complete opposite of what I’ve seen posted here or described in the many YouTube reviews of this product.

I’m posting now to see if anyone else has experienced these problems. I’m 99% sure I will return this watch, but wanted to see if anyone had any helpful insights first.

Here’s some of the issues I’ve had:

-          Set up

o   The watch would not connect to my phone via Bluetooth. It took 3 or 4 tries to connect the watch. Each time the watch face said connected, but the app (app version 3.0.17) on my phone (iPhone 14, iOS 17.6.1) would seem to be stuck on a screen that says “connecting”. I waited over 15 minutes for this. It was obvious this was a problem. Once it finally did connect correctly, the whole process took less than a minute. The watch updated to firmware 18.40.

o   The putter tag is useless. I have a SuperStroke grip with a counter-balance weight in the grip. The screw in putter tag simply won’t work with this type of putter grip. There should be some sort of fix to accommodate these very common grips. Without it, I cannot use the full range of data points and game tracking while playing. This affects my approach/wedge shots and putting. That is a significant amount of strokes!! Also, the stats and shot tracking were main reasons I decided to purchase this watch. It is disappointing to not be able to use them.

-          On Course

o   The biggest issue I had was the watch just would not detect the sensors. It probably only detected the sensor on half the shots I took (all shots except my putter, as mentioned above). I wore the watch on my left-hand, did not have any bracelets or jewelry, did not wear sunscreen or bug spray, and held the sensors near the watch every time. On several occasions I held the sensors next to the watch for several minutes while my three other playing partners took their shots and still did not see a club selected on the face of the watch. There would still be an empty circle indicating the sensor was not recognized even after I took my shot.

o   The face is not bright enough to see in daylight. I was extremely disappointed to learn that brightness is not adjustable (https://v5support.shotscope.com/hc/en-us/articles/23424783872273-Can-you-adjust-the-screen-brightness-on-my-device)

o   The screen automatically locked itself several times. This made it very cumbersome to try to use any features.

o   It was hard to find important screens like shot distance, hole layouts, hazards, layups, etc. This was made difficult because the watch wouldn’t respond when I clicked the buttons to change screens. The screen was not locked, but still wouldn’t change screens. Eventually it would change if I pushed the buttons repeatedly (at least 5 times). This seems impractical. This basically took away the ability to use key features that were some of the main reasons I decided to purchase this watch.

-          After the round

o   The watch would not upload my round. I connected the watch to the app and pressed the sync button. The sync status went up to 99% very quickly and stayed there for 20 minutes. At that point I closed the app and tried again. The same thing happened. I signed out of the app, restarted my phone and watch, then tried again. This time the round synced within minutes. It seems odd that I would have to shut everything down just to sync a round of golf. I’ve had similar Garmin watches and this is not the case with them.

o   The app continuously crashes. I can see my round in the app. When I click on it, I can see the scorecard. If I click the scorecard, the app shuts down. I have no idea what was tracked or recorded in the round – but I can see that it is inaccurate (next point).

o   The score is absolutely inaccurate and not what I entered on the course. I didn’t play my best round and had two blow-up holes. I entered my score accurately while on the course and also kept score on the scorecard provided by the course. What I see in the scorecard does not reflect what I entered. Overall, the score on the app is 8 strokes lower than what I actually shot and entered for the front 9 alone!

o    I can see the round if I sign in to the dashboard on my computer. It would be nice to be able to see this on the app without it crashing. After reviewing my round on the dashboard, I can see that several shots were attributed to the wrong club. I also see extreme discrepancies in performance. For example, one drive that clipped a tree about 175 yards from the tee box and kicked directly right onto the fairway registered as a 324 yard drive and was placed much further down in the fairway from where I actually hit my second shot. By zooming in on the image of the hole on the dashboard, I can see the shot “starting” well far behind the tee box. I was playing the white tees, so this is an extremely large discrepancy. In fact, it looks like this issue of not accurately registering where tee shots started from happened on at least 5 holes! Other holes were missing shots entirely and therefore show tee shots that are incredibly accurate (I wish I could drive a ball 378 yards through the woods and still hit the green on a dogleg).

o   I can’t sign off on my round because the app crashes. This makes it impossible to see any other stats. The stats are a huge selling point for Shot Scope. It’s disappointing to not be able to use them.

 

Edited November 25 by Marino2112