Golf Buddy Pro GPS ????

TheRawEdge · June 22, 2008

Any comparison to Sky Caddie???

Has anyone purchased or used the "GOLF BUDDY GPS?" yet. I have been using the Sky Caddie for about 2-1/2 years and I am getting sick and tired of paying my yearly dues to update courses and add new ones. I went and bought the new Golf Buddy Pro. Its not here yet, but I am hoping I made a good investment. Here is a link to the product in case anyone is wondering.... GOLF BUDDY GPS

Thanks.

golf_fanatik · June 22, 2008

I had the Golf Buddy Pro (B/W version). It is a great unit and I really love the features. However, there were two things that killed the deal for me (It's going back tomorrow):

1.- I was never satisfied with the accuracy or the GPS ability to lock the signal. Eve this afternoon, I tried to give it a one last chance and even with 7 out of 12 sattelites locked the distances would change up to 18 yards without me moving at all. I just didn't have the confidence I was getting the right yardages. This is somewhat in line with other reviews here.

2.- Even though customer service responded within a day or two to my questions, apparently it would take them about 6 or 8 weeks to map a couple of courses I requested. I found this timeframe unacceptable given that others would map within days (Golf Guru for example).

I hear you about not paying sky caddie memberships, but I had the SG5 (I may go back to that unit again) and I never had problems with accuracy or questioning the distances.

Hopefully your unit will turn out good and you don't find the same issues I did. There are features on the Pro that I really loved like:

1.- AA battery backup

2.- Screen backlight

3.- Ability to add/edit hazard targets on a pre-mapped course

4.- Electronic scorecard

5.- Unit can hold up to 20,000 courses

Metalhead · June 23, 2008

I have had the Golf Buddy Pro for a few weeks now, and so far I love it- I have measured my first round with it toe to toe with my Pinseeker and it was dead on and have had a couple more round on it now. Like most GPS systems it takes a moment or two to settle on yardarge, but if you're walking its just about perfect. I love that I never have to tell IT WHERE I AM... it tells me!...and I'm completely done paying for it and downloading(never had too!), thats my kind of GPS!

Golf007 · July 3, 2008

Shaggy just did a video on this. Hate to steal his thunder but here it is:

overview.

Metalhead · July 5, 2008

Shaggy just did a video on this. Hate to steal his thunder but here it is:

overview.

Nice vid! Shaggy sounds like Vince Vaughn!

Lockett · July 11, 2008

I just purchased the Golf Buddy and have used it three times. I am a little disappointed though. When I mark a shot for example it gives me 130 to the front, 140 middle and 150 to the back. If I walk to my ball which landed on the back fringe, the mark distance says 129. Several times it didn't move on to the next hole so I just turned it off and then back on which seemed to work. I have called Tech Service but there is a language barrier that I haven't been able to work through. I noticed it seems to be more accurate on certain holes than others. I guess I thought for that kind of money you would get a more precision reading.

golf_fanatik · July 12, 2008

I just purchased the Golf Buddy and have used it three times. I am a little disappointed though. When I mark a shot for example it gives me 130 to the front, 140 middle and 150 to the back. If I walk to my ball which landed on the back fringe, the mark distance says 129. Several times it didn't move on to the next hole so I just turned it off and then back on which seemed to work. I have called Tech Service but there is a language barrier that I haven't been able to work through. I noticed it seems to be more accurate on certain holes than others. I guess I thought for that kind of money you would get a more precision reading.

This is one of the reasons why I returned the Golf Buddy Pro and got a SG5. I just wasn't satisfied with the accuracy since the unit wouldn't lock the distances properly or give incorrect information when using the mark function. I think some people here have commented on that issue already. Apparently CS service knows about the issue and directed people to install the software upgrade but it didn't make a difference for me.

WesleyD · July 23, 2008

for you guys that have been having problems with accuracy have you tried walking with it? Maybe it just takes to long for it to keep up with a cart?

golf_fanatik · July 23, 2008

for you guys that have been having problems with accuracy have you tried walking with it? Maybe it just takes to long for it to keep up with a cart?

I always walk and had the unit mounted to my clicgear cart. I don't think the issue is with acquiring the signal but rather locking a distance. If you mark a ball and walk to it to get your distance, the number keeps changing between 5 and 10 yards most of the time.

Asleep · July 23, 2008

Having the courses pre-installed is the way to go for me, but accuracy & speed of acquisition are make/break deals.

Too bad, as this was looking like the GPS I was going to try.

jcholman · July 23, 2008

I had a friend play with the sky buddy for 10 holes. The yardages were always off and there was no consistency to the inaccuracy. He went right to the golf store and exchanged for the sky caddy and hasn’t looked back.

golf_fanatik · July 24, 2008

I had a friend play with the sky buddy for 10 holes. The yardages were always off and there was no consistency to the inaccuracy. He went right to the golf store and exchanged for the sky caddy and hasn’t looked back.

I did the same thing. Went back to a Skycaddie SG5 and haven't had any problems. In addition, when I had the Golf Buddy unit(s) I requested two courses to be mapped and customer service it would take about four weeks to get it done. It's been two months and they haven't released those courses yet. The Buddy looks good on paper but needs further refinement.. maybe the next version will be ok.

phil75070 · July 24, 2008

For pure accuracy, course-wise, the SG2.5 or SG5 are the way to go since they physically map the courses. Everybody else uses satellite/aerial photos which are not always up-to-date or possibly hard to exactly interpret. However, the disadvantage to me with the SkyGolf products is that you cannot modify a downloaded course or map a course yourself with anything other than front, center, back of the greens.

If you have a bunker or creek which cuts diagonally across the fairway, at what point of the hazard did SkyGolf mark the "to" and "carry" yardages? Same with any other pre-mapped course from anyone for that matter. That is why I chose the Golf Guru. With the Golf Guru I can map an entire course myself, or modify a downloaded course, hiding targets they mapped that I don't need or adding/replacing others. For critical targets, I can be sure of where I stood when I marked a point on the course. I can even map multiple points for the same hazard, such as water right, water center, water left. The only problem is that Golf Guru's software is not 100% stable. There are still issues with mapping or modifying course maps.

BTW, both use the same GPS technology so GPS accuracy between the SkyGolf product and the Golf Guru is a non issue.

jdgolfsmasher · May 7, 2009

Very nice. I was at the golf store yesterday and they were trying to get me to buy the Golf Buddy Pro. He tried the others out but really went for the golf buddy pro. He said there were some firmware updates for it. These posts look a bit old. Has the firmware made the device even that much better and maybe fixing some of the complaints in the begining of this thread? All in all everyone complains about something on any GPS I have read about. My main concerns are the front/middle/back placements are accurate the rest is butter. So if anyone recently has been using this product with the latest firmware please let me know. Thanks!