Garmin Approach R10 Portable Golf Launch Monitor

[Blotto Otto]

In Australia:  GolfBox, House of Golf, Drummonds etc have removed the R10 from their sites completely...   

 

 

 

 

[tezzlacoil]

3 minutes ago, Blotto Otto said:

In Australia:  GolfBox, House of Golf, Drummonds etc have removed the R10 from their sites completely...   

 

 

 

 

Yeah powergolf the same. Not accepting anymore preorders till clarification on timeframes from garmin.

 

Lol should have bought shares in garmin... They are laughing all the way to the bank

[Blotto Otto]

should be interesting to see if they have the units to fill pre-orders already paid for...    
 

someone heard from Golfbox that they won't be able to get any more units until December/Jan 2022.   

[RH2020]

17 hours ago, Sandhurst241069 said:

Gotta say this whole R10 thing is an exercise in first world anxiety.. lol

For starters, my unit was originally due this week (in Aus) but has been delayed due to Garmin supply issues with no firm ETA yet available. In the meantime I’m watching the most eclectic assortment of reviews and early feedback possible.. with very little coming out of Garmin to hang off.. I don’t know whether I’m going to be the guy who loves the features and finds the numbers and rendering decent enough .. or the guy who gets 95 yard 9 irons and counter ballflights!! I do know I’ve spent a bit of money on setting up a low end sim in my garage - including projector and impact screen - in anticipation of / preparation for the R10 .. and that my SC300 is giving me good numbers in that setup (so presumably my space is Doppler friendly). Its killing me .. thing is I’m mentally all in on having the sim now (Melbourne lockdown syndrome) so if the R10 is a bust I will definitely be saving for a Skytrack even though it would not have been a consideration initially..

Rant over!! 😂

There is also launchpro coming soon…

[jimmies78]

I’ve had mine now for a couple of weeks and I’m certainly getting the short distance issues and weird spin and flight occurrences. I hit into a net outside with 7ft from unit to ball and 10.5ft ball to net

 

When playing HTH and I have a 20/25 yard chip to the green…..sometimes it goes 40 yards and sometimes 10. Now I’m no amazing golfer but I can tell you for certain that these shots were similarly struck……they may not be 20 yards….but they were not in the range of 10 to 40 yards !

 

I’m not after precision …….but I would like it to be within stated specs…..right now I just cannot trust it and now I’m at that point I’m losing the joy of practicing with it - this is similar to the feeling of using a gps on course and it throws out weird distances sometimes and not being able to trust the numbers, this is why I went to a laser

 

I think I’ll be swapping it out for a memo+ and just spending the extra…..I was really hoping for this to be good as it is a breeze to use

[thossman]

21 hours ago, Ukfan323 said:

Fwiw I had originally pre-ordered a month ago from a different company, keeps getting pushed back. Today I checked Dicks and they said it was available online so I put another order in and just got a tracking number for arrival at the end of the week.

 

They might still have some 

Got one after your post too. Thanks 😊 

[Oh Hi Carl]

Just ordered mine from Dicks.  Apparently I got the last one they had to ship in the US.  Should arrive on Friday.  

[bogeypro]

8 hours ago, jimmies78 said:

I’ve had mine now for a couple of weeks and I’m certainly getting the short distance issues and weird spin and flight occurrences. I hit into a net outside with 7ft from unit to ball and 10.5ft ball to net

 

When playing HTH and I have a 20/25 yard chip to the green…..sometimes it goes 40 yards and sometimes 10. Now I’m no amazing golfer but I can tell you for certain that these shots were similarly struck……they may not be 20 yards….but they were not in the range of 10 to 40 yards !

 

I’m not after precision …….but I would like it to be within stated specs…..right now I just cannot trust it and now I’m at that point I’m losing the joy of practicing with it - this is similar to the feeling of using a gps on course and it throws out weird distances sometimes and not being able to trust the numbers, this is why I went to a laser

 

I think I’ll be swapping it out for a memo+ and just spending the extra…..I was really hoping for this to be good as it is a breeze to use

did you make sure it's updated to latest software?  I updated mine and no issues since...

[bogeypro]

I just got mine yesterday.  I did the update and went to the range yesterday evening and today.  Yesterday was raining and today was beautiful clear weather.

 

I made sure have the teeing area 6 -8 feet from the unit.  At that distance, I could easily move a foot either way and still get readings.  I just made sure I was aiming correctly at a target in the distance.  I did find that if you are too close to the unit, it doesn't seem to like that.  

 

I found the unit to be with distances.  I was verifying with range finder, as well.  I have only played with the driving range, but so far it seems great.  

 

If hitting off mats, make sure the unit is level with the mat and not below it.  Also, it didn't do  the best when hitting from a covered bay into the rainy driving range.  It was ok, but I'd get some weird numbers on wedges.  

 

I give it a solid A.  Very user friendly and meets my expectations.  I don't expect 30k trackman, but it works great for most everything I need.  

Edited September 1, 2021 by bogeypro

[whumber]

1 hour ago, bogeypro said:

did you make sure it's updated to latest software?  I updated mine and no issues since...

 

I've definitely seen the chipping issue described. Overall my experience has been fairly positive, but chipping can definitely be a crapshoot. I've seen chips that actually carried about 10ft register as 30 yards.

[jimmies78]

5 hours ago, bogeypro said:

did you make sure it's updated to latest software?  I updated mine and no issues since...

Yes, this was the first thing I did when I got it. 

 

I can accept that my alignment may not be 100% straight but that should mean I have consistent 'errors'. I bought this as a means to get better and I also use the sim for the fun element, I'd happily accept the stated specs for this device if it performed like it. So the question I need to answer is, do I wait and hope an update sorts it or do I go to mevo+ as it is a more capable device but potentially fragile

[JCisME]

I decided to take the leap and ordered one from rock bottom yesterday. Got my tracking number today for delivery tomorrow. Planning on taking it to the driving range this weekend.

[dpvu]

I've only been able to hit indoors for about a week now but this has already changed the way I approach golf. I used to have a net I could put up in the backyard and a mat but even with my G80 giving me a distance I felt very little incentive to actually set up and get reps in. I always had the garage space but no desire to set something up to practice in the winter. The R10 motivated me to set up my space in the garage and now I'm hitting balls every day with good feedback and most of all I'm having a blast. 

 

Before this I considered the Mevo+ and Skytrak but Skytrak was out because I wanted to be able to take the unit to the range. A Mevo+ is $1800 CAD more than this unit so with that $1800 I've been able to fully set up my indoor space and still have like $1400 left and I'm getting most of the same experience (plus extras like Home Tee Hero).

 

I know some people have struggled with accuracy and I honestly don't know if I've just been lucky or there's something in their set up and swing but my numbers have been great. If you're a casual golfer looking for feedback and reps, this is what you want. I do think the carry with the driver is about 10-15 yards short but I can live with that and I hope they do improve the algorithms. 

[Sandhurst241069]

3 minutes ago, dpvu said:

I've only been able to hit indoors for about a week now but this has already changed the way I approach golf. I used to have a net I could put up in the backyard and a mat but even with my G80 giving me a distance I felt very little incentive to actually set up and get reps in. I always had the garage space but no desire to set something up to practice in the winter. The R10 motivated me to set up my space in the garage and now I'm hitting balls every day with good feedback and most of all I'm having a blast. 

 

Before this I considered the Mevo+ and Skytrak but Skytrak was out because I wanted to be able to take the unit to the range. A Mevo+ is $1800 CAD more than this unit so with that $1800 I've been able to fully set up my indoor space and still have like $1400 left and I'm getting most of the same experience (plus extras like Home Tee Hero).

 

I know some people have struggled with accuracy and I honestly don't know if I've just been lucky or there's something in their set up and swing but my numbers have been great. If you're a casual golfer looking for feedback and reps, this is what you want. I do think the carry with the driver is about 10-15 yards short but I can live with that and I hope they do improve the algorithms. 

Have you had a close look at the path and AOA numbers? How accurate .. and almost more importantly.. stable are these numbers? 

[nloprete]

[2four22]

Another review of the R10:

 

[jagmanjoe]

2 hours ago, nloprete said:

Nioprete, if you have not yet returned your unit, could you kindly note your serial number and post it so others of us might be able to use it as a guide relative to other units with the old hardware issue?  Thanks

 

[mikeat00]

Returned mine last night.  I'll wait to see if they fix the range issues over time and repurchase if they do.  I'm not willing to hold on it it in hopes of them fixing it.

[dpvu]

9 hours ago, Sandhurst241069 said:

Have you had a close look at the path and AOA numbers? How accurate .. and almost more importantly.. stable are these numbers? 

 

They're okay enough but if those types of numbers really interest you I don't think the R10 is the right unit for you. Over a few shots it is useful to see if you're generally swinging in to out or out to in and things like positive attack angle with driver do register but I would say it's hard to trust any individual shot. The club data is a lot more suspect than the ball data.

[Red4282]

14 hours ago, JCisME said:

I decided to take the leap and ordered one from rock bottom yesterday. Got my tracking number today for delivery tomorrow. Planning on taking it to the driving range this weekend.

Wth, i ordered mine nearly a month ago and  still no word….

[ry.g.07]

11 hours ago, dpvu said:

I've only been able to hit indoors for about a week now but this has already changed the way I approach golf. I used to have a net I could put up in the backyard and a mat but even with my G80 giving me a distance I felt very little incentive to actually set up and get reps in. I always had the garage space but no desire to set something up to practice in the winter. The R10 motivated me to set up my space in the garage and now I'm hitting balls every day with good feedback and most of all I'm having a blast. 

 

Before this I considered the Mevo+ and Skytrak but Skytrak was out because I wanted to be able to take the unit to the range. A Mevo+ is $1800 CAD more than this unit so with that $1800 I've been able to fully set up my indoor space and still have like $1400 left and I'm getting most of the same experience (plus extras like Home Tee Hero).

 

I know some people have struggled with accuracy and I honestly don't know if I've just been lucky or there's something in their set up and swing but my numbers have been great. If you're a casual golfer looking for feedback and reps, this is what you want. I do think the carry with the driver is about 10-15 yards short but I can live with that and I hope they do improve the algorithms. 

 

Mind if I ask where you ordered from in Canada?

[vsabre]

I've had mine now for a couple of weeks and several hundred shots both indoor and on the range. Also one long indoor session side by side with the original Mevo. Once I took more time in alignment it works just fine. The numbers vs. the Mevo were spot on give or take 1 to 3 percent. Dropped shots were minimal. HTH is fine but indoor swing affect was there and I need to work on that. The R10 meets my expectations and definitely plan to keep it.

 

One thing. Pay attention to people posting in this thread. I'm seeing a lot of new names who just joined this week with one or two posts. I doubt they came here as a "public service". We're all aware of the limitations of less expensive launch monitors and if not, save up and get something that will meet your expectations...

[games]

As a MEVO+ user watching this thread with interest, I will say Flightscope replaced a bit of hardware early on, too.  I suspect early mass-production units in this space will tend to have higher levels of QC issues.  The radar alignment may be a shade off or other sensors not aligned quite right.  FS got it right over time, and you hear few issues about hardware matters anymore.  I'm sure Garmin will do right by its customers.

 

That said, I'm still not sold on the accuracy of the measurements of the club leading to plausible estimates of spin and spin axis.  A lot of reports of unlimited flight where actual ball goes left but Garmin algorithm rendering the ball going right would have me concerned.  Admittedly, hardware alignment could play a role.

 

As an observer, my early conclusion is this is a MEVO (not plus) with SWAGs at spin, spin axis, and AoA with a few ball flight graphics thrown in to make it look legit.

Edited September 3, 2021 by games

[Sandhurst241069]

7 hours ago, dpvu said:

 

They're okay enough but if those types of numbers really interest you I don't think the R10 is the right unit for you. Over a few shots it is useful to see if you're generally swinging in to out or out to in and things like positive attack angle with driver do register but I would say it's hard to trust any individual shot. The club data is a lot more suspect than the ball data.

Not over invested in those numbers for their own sake .. but as they are being used to calculate spin loft and face angle for the purpose of spin and spin axis calcs they aren’t just window dressing .. particularly given you’re not entering club lofts as a mandatory parameter for that purpose.. so they don’t need to be GC Quad quality by any means but they can’t afford to be complete rubbish either..

[vsabre]

5 hours ago, games said:

As a MEVO+ user watching this thread with interest, I will say Flightscope replaced a bit of hardware early on, too.  I suspect early mass-production units in this space will tend to have higher levels of QC issues.  The radar alignment may be a shade off or other sensors not aligned quite right.  FS got it right over time, and you hear few issues about hardware matters anymore.  I'm sure Garmin will do right by its customers.

 

That said, I'm still not sold on the accuracy of the measurements of the club leading to plausible estimates of spin and spin axis.  A lot of reports of unlimited flight where actual ball goes left but Garmin algorithm rendering the ball going right would have me concerned.  Admittedly, hardware alignment could play a role.

 

As an observer, my early conclusion is this is a MEVO (not plus) with SWAGs at spin, spin axis, and AoA with a few ball flight graphics thrown in to make it look legit.

I think your assessment is fair. It's very close to my original Mevo with added simulator features which I like. Not thrilled about IOS only for the free 5 E6 courses but I can work around that and the HTH courses work just fine my Galaxy S21 (Android) along with the Driving Range which I can screen mirror to a big Samsung TV I hung in my garage practice area. One caveat is that Garmin hasn't figured out 16:9 aspect ratio for either IOS or Android in Garmin Golf but they are working on it apparently..

[dpvu]

So I got some time at a place with a FlightScope Range unit today and here is the data from about 60 shots with 5 clubs. The conditions were pretty calm so I don't think wind was a huge factor here. The R10 was set up about 6 feet behind (couldn't measure) and roughly 1.5" below due to the mat. This was outdoors with range balls but this place had ones in decent condition.

 

The graphs show the R10 on the y axis and the FlightScope data on the x axis. The line is y = x so basically the closer each point is to the line the more both units agree. Points above the line are higher on the R10 and below are higher on the FlightScope.

 

You can see the R10 really excels at ball speed and launch angle (the bias horizontal is likely slight alignment difference). The vertical launch angle was about 1 degree higher on the R10 pretty consistently which may be due to the height below the mat or distance from the ball I had. Carry was actually usually higher on the R10 and total distance wasn't bad as well. 

 

Spin is where things are a bit messy. The R10 was consistently low which is different than my testing indoors against the GC Hawk. It also had a lot of issues reading higher spin accurately. Sidespin was generally directionally okay with some shots reporting the wrong spin but over a large dataset I think you would be generally correct but any individual shot has the potential for some pretty high error.

 

Club speed is the only thing that's disappointing considering it was so good on the G80. 

 

Overall, for $600 you're getting what I think is fair. I couldn't get club data but launch conditions are fundamentally being captured well outdoors.

[stanjl50]

1 hour ago, dpvu said:

So I got some time at a place with a FlightScope Range unit today and here is the data from about 60 shots with 5 clubs. The conditions were pretty calm so I don't think wind was a huge factor here. The R10 was set up about 6 feet behind (couldn't measure) and roughly 1.5" below due to the mat. This was outdoors with

 

 

 

Great work! This is very interesting. Garmin consistently underestimates backspin which should mean it overestimates distances, but it does not. Club speed is almost always underestimated, but that would be easy to "fix" although there would still be a larger variance on that measure. If a regression line were run on the current club speed data then the distance between that and the 45 degree line would provide either a fixed amount of undercounting of club speed with which to "adjust" the Garmin values, or a fixed percentage, whichever did a better job reducing the deviations. We could all mentally apply the adjustment, or Garmin could easily change the algorithm. If we could see results for deviation left or right (hint, hint) we could determine whether the spin even matters. In other words, if Garmin gets the distance right, and it gets the deviation left or right correct, then it knows where the ball landed. it wouldn't really matter what the spin reading is except for the shape of the flight. For simulation the spin reading (and its errors) would be entirely irrelevant. That assumes that Garmin does OK on the left/right deviation. That seems unlikely, but it is also unlikely that it would get the distance correct when it gets the backspin wrong.  I think overall that this is pretty encouraging.

Edited September 4, 2021 by stanjl50
wording

[dpvu]

1 hour ago, stanjl50 said:

 

Great work! This is very interesting. Garmin consistently underestimates backspin which should mean it overestimates distances, but it does not. Club speed is almost always underestimated, but that would be easy to "fix" although there would still be a larger variance on that measure. If a regression line were run on the current club speed data then the distance between that and the 45 degree line would provide either a fixed amount of undercounting of club speed with which to "adjust" the Garmin values, or a fixed percentage, whichever did a better job reducing the deviations. We could all mentally apply the adjustment, or Garmin could easily change the algorithm. If we could see results for deviation left or right (hint, hint) we could determine whether the spin even matters. In other words, if Garmin gets the distance right, and it gets the deviation left or right correct, then it knows where the ball landed. it doesn't really matter what the spin reading is except for the shape of the flight. For simulation the spin reading (and its errors) would be entirely irrelevant. I think this is pretty encouraging.

I think there definitely is hope since for 80% of the answer the R10 is doing a good job. I found similar results against a GC Hawk indoors where ball speed and launch angle was very good. On spin I will say it's a bit interesting because I get much better spin rates indoors (I do get wedges to spin closer to the expected 9k+ RPM indoors) except indoors my R10 seems to overestimate spin. I found that when I tested against the GC Hawk. I'm also not 100% sure how FlightScope Range calculates spin as well being radar based (likely some model applied over the long ball flight and some hidden club data?). 

Edited September 4, 2021 by dpvu

[RCGA]

I had this in my cart for the 3rd time in a month, and decided to check the Garmin forums before finally pressing the confirmation button. I'm happy I did....

 

The R10 is getting raked over the coals with Garmin offering replacement units. It looks like they're reworking the R10's hardware in factory and creating a calibration option. But all in all it seems like this release is a mess. 

 

 

 

[dpvu]

1 hour ago, RCGA said:

I had this in my cart for the 3rd time in a month, and decided to check the Garmin forums before finally pressing the confirmation button. I'm happy I did....

 

The R10 is getting raked over the coals with Garmin offering replacement units. It looks like they're reworking the R10's hardware in factory and creating a calibration option. But all in all it seems like this release is a mess. 

 

Most of the problems people are having are into a net. I've still had relatively good numbers indoors into a net with the exception of driver being 10-15 yards short. I think Garmin over-promised by saying only 8 feet to the net was required. I have about 10-11 in my garage and the test I did with GC Hawk was about 11-12. Calibration may help for those that are having a problem with launch angles. All you need for a good distance is speed, launch angle, spin and spin axis. We know spin is going to be what it is with this but speed has been good for me so perhaps a way to calibrate the launch angle will really dial it in.  

 

8 hours ago, stanjl50 said:

If we could see results for deviation left or right (hint, hint) we could determine whether the spin even matters. In other words, if Garmin gets the distance right, and it gets the deviation left or right correct, then it knows where the ball landed. it wouldn't really matter what the spin reading is except for the shape of the flight. For simulation the spin reading (and its errors) would be entirely irrelevant. That assumes that Garmin does OK on the left/right deviation. That seems unlikely, but it is also unlikely that it would get the distance correct when it gets the backspin wrong.  I think overall that this is pretty encouraging.

 

Here's the same plot with horizontal deviation added. It's "generally okay". The scale can be a bit deceiving as a point "close" to the line could still easily be 10-15 yards deviation different so those thinking about this unit have to decide if that's something they're willing to accept.

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by dpvu