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Do not buy for golf (at least yet)

Former Member over 7 years ago

I was pretty happy with my Vivoactive HR, but liked some of the features of the Vivoactive 3. For golf, its a big step backwards.
1. Autoshot doesn't work
2. They removed shot measuring feature of Vivoactive HR. Autoshot was supposed to replace, but even if it worked it is not nearly as useful.
3. Syncing and downloading courses is a major pain and often takes 3-4 times
4. GPS acquisition takes forever

I love the feel, quality, face, form, etc. of the watch. If the golf features worked, I'd be extremely happy. How you release a watch with the advertised features just not working is beyond me? They must not have had anyone who golfs beta test this watch or give feedback on features. Very unhappy and probably returning.

Anyone have thoughts whether Garmin can be trusted to fix these features? I bought Vivoactive HR after it had been out for a while. Were there similar growing pains with it?

0 Greg_D over 7 years ago

I see the distance to the pin on the watch face, and the distance to the green (front, middle, back), but on the iPhone app I only see the fairway overhead layout of the hole. No shots or distance. Basically no detail at all for markings. The app is only good for scoring the final hole score...

Greg

0 Ad78 over 6 years ago

With the mentioned workaround, I was actually quite satisfied using the va3 for a round of golf (some problems when playing only 9 holes). However, with three upgrade to 5.50, I am no longer ableabl set a handicap altogether. The option just isn't there, I can choose stroke play or stable ford, but no handicap. Is handicap support completely removed, does anyone else have the same problem?

I've even restored to defaults, didn't help. I would actually like to rollback the upgrade, the previous version was working fine for me, except for a few minor issues.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Ad78, Yes, that is the case with me as well. I complained this to local Garmin support, they promised to find out if it is a new bug (again ...) or something they just did. But they have not responded back. At least the guys behind this VA3 Golf functionality don't know anything about golf (which is crazy, as Garmin have pretty good golf watches as well...).

By the way, have you ever heard a scratch player playing a stableford round :). Garmin VA3 team seems to think that's what most of the golfers do as you can't have any handicaps :).

By the way, Garmin Golf app seems to have it's own way of updating the handicap, and you can't change it manually. Maybe it use the USGA or something and assumes that all your rounds will be logged with app and they are all handicap rounds? Which is of course not the case...

0 Ad78 over 6 years ago

Played a round yesterday, and after syncing I manually set the local handicap using the app on my Ipad. The scorecard is now correct, and with all other analysis already in order I'm actually quite pleased with this outcome. Of course, seeing correct score on the watch while playing would be even better, let's hope this returns in the near future.

Not sure I have your problems using the app.

0 Bojofbas over 6 years ago

On 5.50 .. where do I set handicap, can't seem to find it anywhere.... or is that the problem and they have taken that out

0 Ad78 over 6 years ago

Did you read the 3 most recent posts? That is exactly the issue we describe.

Actually, didn't realize until now, I didn't have to apply the workaround to enable stableford. So at least that part seems resolved.

0 Bojofbas over 6 years ago

Workaround does not seem work on my new watch with firmware 5.50