Vivoactive 3 Golf yardages not accurate

Hi,

I have had my VA3 music for a couple weeks, with about 8-10 rounds played. I have really enjoyed it, however feel I am taking the yardages with a grain of salt. Playing with guys who have lasers, and I am anywhere from 10-20 yards off of their readings, with yesterday being almost 30-40 yards at times. Is there a way to manually calibrate the yardages, or possibly update something to improve the accuracy? All other features are great, and this would be even better with consistently accurate yardages.

Thanks for any comments,

I have a VA3 and have played 3 different courses thus far and found it to be accurate to typically 0-3 yards, once in a while 5 yards. I'd call Garmin.

Hi,

I have had my VA3 music for a couple weeks, with about 8-10 rounds played. I have really enjoyed it, however feel I am taking the yardages with a grain of salt. Playing with guys who have lasers, and I am anywhere from 10-20 yards off of their readings, with yesterday being almost 30-40 yards at times. Is there a way to manually calibrate the yardages, or possibly update something to improve the accuracy? All other features are great, and this would be even better with consistently accurate yardages.

Thanks for any comments,

Just a confirmation (most likely obvious, but to make sure), is your watch set to use yards/meters? If wrong, that would explain the around 10% difference. Other thing is that normally you measure with laser the exact flag position, which is always a bit different than front/middle/back of the green measures you get from the watch. Third one is of course the course maps, if they are not up to date there will be differences.Anyway I have found the yardages to be quite accurate.

I have found sometimes when you get a new software update the yardage flips back to meters. I would double check this first and reboot the watch.
Cheers.

just spoke to support. Some people are having issues, me included. He said that there is a bug in that the setting for the general units of measurement is impacting the golf units of measurement. The fix is to set the general units of measurement to Statute and leave golf at yards and this should work. I will test it tonight.

just spoke to support. Some people are having issues, me included. He said that there is a bug in that the setting for the general units of measurement is impacting the golf units of measurement. The fix is to set the general units of measurement to Statute and leave golf at yards and this should work. I will test it tonight.

so that workaround actually worked. First time I have gotten correct yardages. Now if they can just fix the bug.

so that workaround actually worked. First time I have gotten correct yardages. Now if they can just fix the bug.

Don't hold your breath while waiting the fixes to the Golf bugs. I have reported several software bugs already on March, and several times after that. Still nothing. I only got an answer that VA3 is not a dedicated Golf watch. And I agree on that, but I assume that those basic golf functionalities built into the watch should work as advertised...

so that workaround actually worked. First time I have gotten correct yardages. Now if they can just fix the bug.

Can you explain the steps to do this? I don’t know if I’m doing it right..??

Don't hold your breath while waiting the fixes to the Golf bugs. I have reported several software bugs already on March, and several times after that. Still nothing. I only got an answer that VA3 is not a dedicated Golf watch. And I agree on that, but I assume that those basic golf functionalities built into the watch should work as advertised...

That is a bit worrying, as I was looking here with a view to getting one of these for my golf and occasionally to measure runs. What problems are there? Would you not recommend it for golf?

NB. Garmin include this watch on their Golf devices page, so they cannot say that they are not selling it for golf.

I have searched all over and cannot find out what data this watch puts into Garmin Connect from the golf rounds that you play. My wife runs with an FR220 and gets lots of detailed data including map, but there is a paucity of information from Garmin and very little from anywhere else about the vivoactive 3. Garmin just say that Garmin Connect is available.

I have used my VA 3 now on three separate occasions for golfing. Each time yardages were bang on when comparing to both marked sprinkles as well as my rangefinder. Make sure that you have all settings on your VA 3 set properly. If you want yards you need to have the UNITS (in SETTINGS/SYSTEM) on your VA 3 set to MILES.