Stay away from the Approach S60

If you want a reliable device to capture your Golf rounds, stay away from this product. It has clearly designed by someone who never played golf for real.

First of all, the software running on the watch is not robust. A couple of times, my watch just froze and the only way to get out of the software was to reboot the watch which obviously defeat the whole purpose when this happens in the middle of your game.

Second, when you are playing a 18 holes and if some reasons (rangers' instructions for example) you have to jump from hole 5 to 8, proceed and then come back later to finish hole 6 and 7, you are screwed. The software can not handle this and you will get ALL of your following shots registered as being part of hole 5. If only they had a decent UI to allow you to update those wrongly assigned shots (see next).

Third, the UI is anything but useful and professional. Again, nobody seriously playing Golf has designed this UI. No way to zoom or out from the map showing you your shots. No way to move one shot from one hole to another one when the watch got it wrong (see previous bullet point).

Fourth, this watch will stress you for things as simple as this: after hole 9, why the hell is it asking if we want to resume the round or not!! It should be the default. You could tell me that "Hey not a big deal". Well it is, because if you don't see that message when heading to hole 10 and you miss the time window to click on resume, then you are totally screwed and you can not resume playing successfully. This is what happened to me yesterday. Lost my entire round and now when I try to sync my watch with my desktop, it throws an error.

At that price, it is unacceptable to get such a poor quality. I highly recommend to stay away from this product if you want to play golf without the frustration of having to deal with this crap at the same time.

Only good point? Battery life. But what's the point if the rest is not working properly.

Top Replies

All Replies

  • This is NOT TRUE!

    If you change to another hole and set your S60 manually to this hole (because it is not a standard play!) then it is good registered!

    If you continue after hole 9 with resume and set, if necessary, the S60 to the actual hole, then it is good registered!

    That is how my S60 works and and sometimes, if I play alone, I jump between the holes to avoid long waiting times and if I stop and select end round and save round it is ok.

  • Thanks for your answer.  Quick question:  The previous system I had was able to detect that I was on a new teebox and would set everything up for me automatically.  Why would you have to do anything to have that work seamlessly?  This is exactly what I'm saying:  This solution has not been designed by actual golfers.  I should just start my round and then not think about anything else nor have to tweak the settings to make that work.  

  • Normally you play hole 1 and the hole 2 and so on, you do not jump. If you jump, the S60 does not know if it is a "wrong" shot or a new shot.

    It is only to move with your finger on the outside of the S60 to the actual hole ...

  • Thank you for your response but hear me out.  What is the likelyhood of me ending up on the green of hole #5 with my putter and THEN hitting with another club than the putter from teebox #8 being a wrong shot?  I'm just saying that they have everything handy to make the right decision about that particular situation. Meta programming would be:

    if last shot on green #5 was putter and the current shot IS NOT done with a putter AND the player in around teebox #8, then enforce new hole as being #8 because the likelyhood of the player jumping from hole 5 to hole 8 is 100%!

  • I think, it is only a question of what is normal and what not ... I don't care about these things because depending of the quality of the GPS-signal I also get sometimes shots from one hole mixed with that ones from the hole before ...

    This I had not only with the Garmin S60 but also with the ARCCOS-system (with sensors on my clubs) ...

  • I agree that the designers of the S60 appear to never had a golf club in their hands or even come closer than 2km to a golf course. BUT - there was a significant imporvement of the watch over time. Yes, Garmin is not responsive at all to their customers, but eventually some flaws get fixed.

    All in all I have to say -  I'd buy it again (or the S62). Nevertheless - Garmin should listen to real golfers and try to fullfill their needs.

  • Can not agree more Harvey!  This could be a fantastic product and experience but apparently no usability studies have been made to make sure that the app and watch adapt to the golfers and not the reverse.  Also needless to say that the lack of responsiveness from the brand speaks volume on their customer centricity (or lack thereof).