GolfBuddy World Platinum

rlheiman · May 1, 2011

Some thoughts about this GPS

I recently got a Golf Buddy World Platinum and here are some of my thoughts about it.

The positives

The best feature of the GolfBuddy World Platinum GPS is the fact that right out of the box it is ready to go. You don’t need a subscription, you don’t need to download courses, you don’t need to sync it with your computer. You just install the battery, give it a quick charge and within hours you can be playing on the course. It comes pre-loaded with 32,000 courses and can hold up to 40,000. I haven’t found a course that I wanted to play or was planning on playing that wasn’t on the unit. Another cool feature is that it finds the course automatically. You turn it on once you get to the course and by the time you pay and get to the first tee, it has long been ready to go. I found excellent signal and coverage no matter where I went.

I was also impressed by the battery life of this GPS. My Upro barely made it 36 holes in a day. This unit went 72 holes before I needed to recharge it. It also wasn’t powering down during the round either, which surprised me. It was always on, ready to go. This is a nice time saving feature.

The Golf Buddy screen is also a little better and brighter than the Upro I have. I could see it in bright sun light just fine

It also does many things all by itself, hole advance, green view and obvisouly current distance, it also has a nice lay-up distance or you can just touch the screen and get any distances you want. You can also use the scoring module which does the basics too of keeping score, putts, fairways hit, and sand saves. This can be a handy little score card in tracking statistics.

The negatives

The touch screen is more GPS than smart phone. By that I mean, if you have a smart phone, it has amazing sensitivity and ability. The golf buddy was more pressure sensitive like a GPS unit. It wasn’t horrible, but it just didn’t feel as nice a most smart phones.

The hole maps rarely included the trees or tree line. I play a local course that has a couple of clumps of trees that I would have liked to know how far out they were, or what it would take to get by them. It does have all the bunkers and the fairway shape, but not too many trees.

The conclusion

I like a lot of features of the GPS, it will certainly work well for what I need. I loved that it was ready to go out of the box. If only it would have better maps that had a few more details and a better touch screen, it would be near perfect.

ronbo · May 1, 2011

That's why people are will to pay a membership from Skycaddie, my SGX has all of what you were looking for except for FREE..Not a touch screen, but best screen and for sure best Maps for golf hands down......

Jtwo · May 3, 2011

[quote name='ronbo' timestamp='1304293323' post='3200601']
That's why people are will to pay a membership from Skycaddie, my SGX has all of what you were looking for except for FREE..Not a touch screen, but best screen and for sure best Maps for golf hands down......
[/quote]

How is it free if you have to pay a subscription fee to get it?