Review by T. Myers:

I purchased the Golflogix GPS instead of the more popular SkyCaddie because the Golflogix is made by Garmin. Obviously, Garmin knows GPS. The unit is actually a re-packaged Garmin eTrex. It is very solid and sturdy. When I bought it I found that three of the courses that I play were not mapped. I requested them and in one week they were available. Fantastic. I have also submitted questions via email and have been answered promptly. The unit is small and easy to use. It will increment holes automatically when I walk to the next hole. Most of the time I do not need to press any buttons. I would definitely recommend Golflogix.

Review by Rick:

I had one of the early models made by SkyCaddie, and this device is far superior. It’s easier to use, holds 20 downloaded courses (as opposed to 10), finds the course you are at (as opposed to scrolling through a list), is waterproof (as opposed to water resistant), cost far less to get a one year membership to downloadable courses, and turns on in seconds with distances (as opposed to minutes). The 2008 model measures the distance from your last shot so you can tell how far you are hitting each club.

It’s very easy to use. Just turn it on. I had no trouble downloading the courses, and I am a Mac user with the Mac Leopard operating system. The Garmin algorithn for finding distances is quick and accurate.

I really like it and can’t imaging playing golf without it!

Review by Tech Nut:

I’ve owned a SkyCaddie SG3 for some time and, weary of its annual fees, glacial operating speed, and pedestrian display, I decided to go color. I purchased the Garmin Approach G5, but its display is very difficult to see in normal outdoor conditions. So I also purchased the Callaway uPro. I played an entire round on my home course, with all three GPS units mounted on the cart. My findings:

Build quality: All three units are rugged, with great fit-and-finish. The Garmin gets the nod, because it’s waterproof. The Callaway is water-resistant, and you can purchase a watertight skin for an outrageous .99 to protect it further. The SkyCaddie is not recommended for use in the rain.

Size: The Callaway uPro is the smallest and thinnest, about the size of an LG Chocolate phone. The SG3 is similar height and width to the uPro, but much thicker and heavier. The biggest of all is the Garmin, the size of an iPhone and four times as thick. It’s wide, heavy, and not good for the pocket.

Accuracy: The three units properly mapped my home course, agreeing on nearly all distances (within 6 yards of each other) and hazards.

GPS acquisition: The old-technology SG3 takes forever to acquire GPS, sometimes more than five minutes. Both the Garmin and the uPro acquire satellites almost instantly. The uPro has technology that, once it locks onto satellites, it really keeps them. After locking on, I took the unit indoors, and even put it in my pants pocket. It never had to re-acquire. Advantage: uPro.

Getting courses: The Garmin wins handily. All 10,000+ available courses come preloaded in its 1GB memory. No annual fees, no paid memberships. The Garmin Approach G5 offered every course I cared to search. Of course, your mileage may vary.

To make the most of your SkyCaddie, you need to pay for an annual membership on their website, and download courses individually. Some SkyCaddie memberships allow you to download as many courses as you want from all over the world…however, the unit’s paltry memory will only hold a few at a time. The uPro also requires that you sign up on their website (no annual memberships, though). With the uPro, Basic Mode (an alphanumeric color screen that resembles that of a SkyCaddie) is free for unlimited courses. For Pro Mode (the nifty aerial photography view of each course) you pay for only the courses you wish to play, a la carte. Your first Pro Mode course is free.

Information: All units show distances to the front/middle/back of greens. The SG3 also shows hazards on the same screen, but it doesn’t give you hazard carry distances, like the uPro does. The Garmin shows the entire hole, including hazards. But showing the entire hole means that the illustrations of hazards are tiny, as is the accompanying yardage text. Coupled with the Garmin’s dim display, it’s pretty useless. Curiously, the Garmin apparently doesn’t consider trees to be obstacles, so they’re not represented at all on the graphical display. The uPro (in Pro Mode) shows every tree and hazard – in fact, the entire hole, as photographed from satellite. It’s like viewing my actual course (including my house!) from above. There’s absolutely nothing like it.

On the home screen, both the SG3 and the uPro also give you the time of day, battery strength, and GPS signal strength. The Garmin gives you none of the above. You need to briefly press the power button to see the time. It also shows a battery icon, but that never moved during my round.

Battery: The Garmin and SG3 both take AA batteries, whether alkaline, NiMh rechargeable, or lithium ion. With any AA type, both units easily complete at least two rounds. The uPro uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Unlike SkyCaddie models that use internal lithium ion batteries, which are a real horror show to replace (SkyCaddie recommends you send the unit back), the Callaway uPro battery easily drops in. Callaway says it takes three hours to charge, but it didn’t take me anywhere near that long. UPro battery life is 6-12 hours, depending on how bright you set the display’s backlight. With my display settings (see Display, below), I easily completed a round with plenty to spare. As far as battery preferences go: For some, constantly recharging and changing out AAs is a grind. For others, recharging (and eventually, re-purchasing) internal lithium-ion batteries ( for the uPro) is just as bad, especially considering that the battery can leave you high and dry mid-round if you forget to charge it the night before. To each his own.

Display: The SG3 is monochrome, so it doesn’t stand a chance. Its display is dim and boring, but it does give you a button on the side for a backlight. The screen sizes on the SG3 and uPro are nearly identical. The Garmin’s touchscreen display is nearly iPhone-big, and drop-dead gorgeous…when you’re at home. Take it outside, and it washes out to the point of uselessness. Worse yet, to save power, the display times out a few seconds after you touch it, making it even dimmer. You touch the screen to wake it up, but when you touch the screen, the unit thinks you want to measure a distance, so the measurement feature pops up. You need to hit the “Done” button to exit that. There’s no way to increase the screen timeout or disable the screen dimming feature. Also, since the Garmin is a touchscreen, it’s a massive fingerprint magnet, so it only looks pretty for the first hole. The uPro wins the display contest handily, with a bright and functional screen. You can play two ways: graphically (Pro Mode), showing the course via aerial photography, or with big, bright alphanumeric text (Basic Mode). Since golf courses have very low contrast (lots of green color and not much else), I defaulted to the Basic Mode for easy readability. For the aerial view, you can always hit the Pro Mode button on the side of the unit, as it’s much more useful around the green. The uPro’s default setting is to power-save the display after (I think) 45 seconds. Unlike the Garmin, which dims its display, the uPro goes blank until you hit a button, which is an enormous buzzkill. Fortunately, you can get around this. You can change to a longer timeout, or disable standby altogether. As the uPro has a very bright display, what I did was take the backlight down to 25% (from a default 70%), and disabled standby completely. I easily completed a round with plenty of battery life to spare this way. The uPro and the Garmin use a reflective LCD technology that actually makes the display brighter in direct sunlight. The uPro’s version of this technology worked far better than the Garmin’s. The only time the Garmin display looked remotely readable was when you aimed it directly at the sun.

Just for fun, I took along my iPod Touch 2G, to compare all the displays outdoors. I figured that the iPod’s conventional LCD wouldn’t compete with the reflective technology of the Garmin and the uPro. Wrong. The iPod destroyed both of them. It wasn’t even close. So, if you have an iPhone (the iPod Touch won’t do GPS), you may want to look into the golf GPS apps at the App Store. If you do decide to use an iPhone, just remember, it won’t stand up to being dropped, kicked, and tossed around like these three ruggedized units, and it for sure ain’t the least bit water-resistant.

Hole-to-Hole: The simpler SkyCaddie wins here. It automatically advances to the next hole. If there’s any confusion (you’re playing past the current hole, for example), it’ll ask you if you want to move to the next hole. If you’re starting on Number 10, for example, the SkyCaddie makes that selection easier as well, with a grid from which you can select holes via cursor. The Callaway Auto Hole Advance is kind of a drag. If you’re anywhere near the green, Auto-Advance jumps to the next hole. You can’t measure your 40-yard pitch to the current green. And when they say Auto, they mean Auto. In Auto-Advance mode, there’s no way to back up to the current hole, or any previous hole, for that matter. The only way out is to go to either Manual Advance, or Manual Advance With Prompt (it asks you to press the center button to advance). Hitting a button on each hole is tedious. The Garmin Auto-Advances sequentially, but if you jump around (skipping a couple of holes to get around slow play), you need to touch the screen arrows for each hole advance.

Settings: The Garmin gives you almost nothing to customize, as it is both very intelligently designed and extremely automated. It would have been nice to be able to crank the screen brightness, or at least extend the timeout. Both the SG3 and the uPro give you a host of settings to mess with, including screen brightness (contrast only with the SG3), hole advance preferences, and much more.

Cost of ownership: The Garmin and uPro are color, so they’re not cheap. If you want to compare apples to apples, you could go to the color SkyCaddie SG5, but be advised that the SG3, SG4, and SG5 are virtually identical in functionality, screen size – basically, EVERYTHING – so you’re paying almost 0 more for color alone, which is the cost of a whole 20-inch color TV. (My SG3 is discontinued, so now I’m quoting price from the replacement SG4.) Couple that with the amazing wow factor of both the Garmin and the uPro, and the top-of-the-line color SkyCaddie SG5 is a terrible deal. To the SkyCaddie’s cost of ownership, add their totally outrageous annual membership fees. SkyCaddie also charges ridiculous sums of money for stuff like plastic cart mounts and batteries. The Garmin wins here, hands-down, with all available courses preloaded into memory. No fees whatsoever! For accessories, RAM Mounts makes a rock-solid, relatively reasonably-priced cart mount for the Garmin. The uPro, while not requiring you to pay for a membership, makes you download each course. They’re all free, if you want to use only Basic Mode. But if you want what makes the unit famous and awesome, which is Pro Mode video previews and flyovers of each hole, you need to pay. If you go for a 20-course package, for example, that’s . It’s still cheaper for most people than SkyCaddie, because there’s no annual fee. And the more courses you buy, the cheaper it gets per course. However, uPro accessories such as cart mounts are rarely discounted, and you’ll pay more for their little plastic add-ons than you would pay for a complete multi-handset cordless phone system or a new DVD player.

Extras: Each unit has (or will soon have, in the uPro’s case) the ability to track scores and aggregate player information. I don’t use any of that stuff. No amount of button-pushing or touch-screening could beat the ease and speed of marking stuff down with a pencil.

Wow Factor: The SkyCaddie is deadly dull, with zero Wow Factor, but highly functional. One would think the Garmin, with its big, beautiful touchscreen, would win. However, the screen is just too dim to view the image-based interface in normal outdoor lighting. The Callaway uPro, with its unique video flyovers of every hole, is the winner. While the flyovers may not be great outdoors (golf courses are green-on-green-on-green, so there’s little contrast), they’re great for previewing new courses in your home before you travel. Beyond that, the uPro comes with several preloaded video tutorials to help you get the most from the unit, and an earbud is in the box, so you can listen to the video narration. Voice Recognition, to allow you to change settings, holes, etc. by voice command, is built into the Callaway uPro, and they say it’ll be activated by late 2009.

Summary: Not one of these units is perfect, but the Callaway uPro is the runaway winner. It’s simple to use, highly customizable, deadly accurate, super-fast, and gorgeous to view. 2nd place goes to the SkyCaddie, even with its monochrome screen, pokey operation, and 20th Century technology. The Garmin comes in last, even though it’s the most sophisticated, intelligent, beautiful, automated piece, made by people who really know GPS. The thing is just too dim to use outdoors.

Review by George Madden:

My son and I used this on a local course for the first time and it performed great. No more looking for markers or taking the time to walk off an estimate (er, OK – especially when I’m not in the fairway). We have some large greens thankfully and being able to simply move the flag on the device for a much more accurate reading is super. Also, those few great drives I had – the G5 made it simple to get the exact yardage (did not break any records though). Only 1 of my 7 (regular home area) courses is not programmed in yet but I see it’s on schedule in the next update. If yours isn’t, simply let Garmin know like I did. Great unit, now if only my golf got better

Update note: Today (4/26) I downloaded Garmins latest course database to the device and now all my courses are available.

Review by The Gadgetman:

I was one of their early adopters (way before USGA and R&A made them legal) and had their original SkyCaddie. Back then, it was a technological breakthrough and I benefitted (and my buddies) on the course. And last year I started my quest to find the latest golf GPS. Of course, the first place to look was at SkyCaddie. SG5 was their first color display, improved GPS reception, bigger display…but nothing really new in terms of features. I guess they figured they had the market cornered as their competition was range finders. Meanwhile, I was starting to get tired of their limitations such as I can only load 10 courses at a time, their customer service (or lack of) and their annual membership.

However, while they sat on their rear, this product sector evolved and other competitors jumped in. This year there are whole suite of new GPS with next generation features. I looked at uPro Golf (now owned by Callaway). Cool flyby like what you see on TV, but noticed from other users that it had several common issues mostly with their display and battery life. So my search continued. I then looked at OnPar Golf. It looked like my iPhone with the similar touchscreen and icons. That UI works for iPhone, but not for golf GPS. Then I looked at Bushnell Yardage Pro XCG. I thought this was it. It had everything I wanted, no major issues mentioned by other users/reviewers. One of my buddies bought one and I had a hands-on experience on a course. I was actually one click away from owning it (from Amazon, of course) and I decided to make one last google…and then I found Garmin’s Approach G5 unit. Yup, it’s most expensive GPS unit but it’s made by Garmin, the GPS expert. I’ve been very happy with their Nuvi GPS units. They currently have 9,400+ courses and they’re FREE. NO ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS! You simply download new courses from their web site and you can load all those courses on your unit so no more shuffling courses onto my unit. Best of all, it’s waterproof! Unlike Skycaddie, you’re not limited to the 40-targets on each hole (though,I typically only see a handful). You just drag a circle with your finger on a birds-eye-view and it will tell you how far you are to that. It also keeps scores up to 4 and you can download it to your PC afterwards. I also like that you use batteries instead of rechargeable. I lost count of time I forgot to charge my SkyCaddie and when my buddies call me last minutes I couldn’t use it the whole round. Now, I just keep spare batteries in my bag.

So, the bottom line is before you consider SkyCaddie units, research the other GPS models before plunking down your hard earned money. I’m confident that you’ll find one with much better features for a similar price. If you’re interested in the Garmin G5, there are ton of videos on YouTube so check them out! If money is not an option, then definitely go with Garmin Approach G5. Otherwise, the Bushnell Yardage Pro XCG is your best bet.

Also, for those that own iPhone 3G/3GS there are quite a few apps you can use to make your iPhone into Golf GPS. I’ve been tinkering with Golfshot (the .99 version. Don’t bother with their 99 cent version) and I have to say it’s damn good app. It even comes with statistical report so you know which part of your game you should be working on. But I’m sticking with my Garmin G5, because the Golfshot depletes my iPhone battery like crazy. My iPhone is not rugged and waterproof either so I’ll use it as my backup, but not as my main golf GPS.

Review by Don I.:

Highly recommended. I read the previous comment and can not understand why he had any problems.

This unit is wonderful. Loaded like a charm. The Subscription was about for a year and you can load 10 courses for this rate. There are higher subscription rates if you’d like to have more courses or even international courses. Change courses as often as you like.

This even had the specs for my favorite “remodeled” course which was finished in February. Very up-to-date info.

Accurate! Will measure to the center of the green and will even measure your drive distance. Problem is, when other people on the course see my skycaddie that all want to “play” with it. It can slow down the game.

Review by D. W. Watson:

I’ve used this device twice now. The software setup could be improved. I was able to figure it out even though it would not install on my (D:) drive as I requested. It would still default to the (C:\Program Files)folder. It does allow you to install on multiple computers though. As for the device’s operation, it was spot-on consistant with a fellow golfer’s much more expensive SkyCaddie GPS. Course downloads are simple and I have not found a course yet that I play that is not available. I doubt that I will ever download 100 courses. It would be nice if I could bank my course credits and use them anytime to download courses, and then be required to pay an additional for another 100 courses. It’s hard to predict what courses I might play during the next 11 months, but for the price, I don’t think it can be beat right now by anything else on the market.

Review by J. Murphrey:

This is a great unit for the price. It does what it says it will do. There are plenty of golf courses available for the 34 buck fee from igolf and you can download 100 in a year. I only found one yardage off on one hole of the courses where I have used it.

I mapped distances to hazards on various holes on my home course and it works great.

I played with a friend recently who had a golf guru and one who had a golf buddy gps. They are neat with a lot more features then this one, but then they cost over twice as much. Their yardages matched mine on the bushnell neo. I am very satisfied and I got it for about 9 from a partner of Amazon OpticsPlanet.

The only reason I did not give this a 5 star rating is that the manual was not well written and the software instructions were incomplete. But, this should not be a deterrent to buying one.

Jim in Texas

Review by B. T. Norris:

This is a nice gadget that works well and I recommend it. I’ve used it on two different courses with numerous obstacles and these are well mapped. I found all distances to be very accurate when I compared them against the course’s surveyed markers. The big plus though is that you don’t have to look for those markers plus Sonocaddie provides information that the markers alone cannot provide, like “how far to that creek that runs in front of the green on a par 5 hole” which helps in my lay-up club selection.

The display shows obstacles to the left, right, and in the fairway using easy to understand icons. A large button on the side lets you switch back and forth between an overview display, which shows all the obstacles and distances for that hole, and a close-up display of the distances to the front, center, and back of the green. The display is easier to see outdoors in daylight than indoors under artificial light. The yardage numbers on the overview display are a bit small which requires me to have my reading glasses with me to see them clearly but younger players will have no trouble.

The menus are logical, well laid out, consistent, and easy to navigate. The left small button is used to back out of menus, although a few displays don’t include the “ESC” (escape) annotation. The buttons themselves have a good feel to them and always work. They appear to be high-quality buttons that will last a long time.

Sonocaddie comes with a belt clip that is spring-loaded to attach easily to your belt or waistband. It snaps onto the belt clip with a reassuring click and will not come loose. However, the clip itself has some tendency to work its way loose from the belt, but I suspect this is only a problem for those of us who are, uh, fat. A button on top of the clip releases it easily.

It’s easy to add a new obstacle or edit one that was downloaded. Just stand at the location you want to mark, select edit, use the arrow buttons to select a position on the screen, select an icon for your obstacle, and then press record. It’s easier to do than to read about doing it. At some point it asks you if you want to save the change.

There are numerous courses listed in their database and there is no subscription required, a big plus in my opinion And it holds 20 courses with 18 holes and 6 obstacles for each hole. A comment to another posting indicates that Sonocaddie will map a course for you on request. Course downloads work but are a little quirky. You might have to retry, back out of the download menu and reenter it, restart Sonocaddie, reboot your computer, etc. It’s hard to know exactly what to do when a download fails except to keep at it. I was, however, able to download 18 courses without too much trouble.

You can enter in your score for each hole and Sonocaddie will add them up for the arithmetic-challenged It has the par and handicap information for each hole and it would be nice if you could enter the player’s handicap and let Sonocaddie calculate the net score but it doesn’t do this.

All in all Sonocaddie is a good device and I recommend it. I am not affiliated with Sonocaddie in any way except that I’m an owner/user.

Review by Sydney in San Antonio:

I wrote a review on this product when it first hit the market over a year ago. Not sure where that review went but I’ve got an update. The product initially impressed me because of its ease of use, capability – it stores 20 courses, and the no-membership/download costs. When I first got my Sonocaddie I had to input my own data, available local courses were lacking. Well, in 11 months hundreds of courses all over the US have become available for download. When I’m on the course with my playing partners everyone checks with me for distance to the pin/green. The accuracy is great, wish my ball striking ability were only half as good! After almost 11 months of near flawless performance my Sonocaddie went to a dark screen with the application features barely visible. Initially I assumed a battery issue; but switching to fresh batteries didn’t fix my problem. After describing my problem to DENNCO, the US Distributor, they instructed me to ship my Sonocaddie to them, insured, for there evaluation. I was elated when I received a new replacement unit in less than 12 days. It is clear DENNCO understands customer service and stands by their product’s 1 year warranty. I highly recommended this item almost a year ago and now I recommend both the product and its US Supplier. RonO