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I have owned a SkyCaddie SG3 for many time and, weary of its yearly fees, glacial operating speed, and pedestrian display, I decided to go color. I bought the Garmin Approach G5, but its display is hard to see in normal outdoor conditions. So I also bought the Callaway uPro. I played an complete 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 is waterproof. The Callaway is water resistant, and you may be able to buy a watertight skin for an outrageous $24.99 to protect it more. The SkyCaddie isn’t suggested 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 alike 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 is large, heavy, and not good for the pocket.

Accuracy: The three units properly mapped my home course, agreeing on almost all distances within six yards of each other and hazards.

GPS acquisition: The old technology SG3 takes forever to get GPS, on occasion more than five minutes. Both the Garmin and the uPro get satellites nearly instantly. The uPro has technology that, once it locks onto satellites, it really keeps them. After locking on, I took the unit indoors, and 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 yearly fees, no paid memberships. The Garmin Approach G5 offered every course I cared to search. Of course, your mileage may differ.

To make the most of your SkyCaddie, you have to pay for an yearly membership on their web site, and download courses individually. Many SkyCaddie memberships let you to download as many courses as you want from all over the world.However, the unit’s paltry memory will only hold some at a time. The uPro also requires that you register on their web site no yearly 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 want to play, a la carte. Your 1st 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 does not give you hazard carry distances, like the uPro does. The Garmin shows the complete hole, as well as hazards. But showing the complete hole means that the illustrations of hazards are tiny, as is the accompanying yardage text. Coupled with the Garmin’s dim display, it is pretty useless. Curiously, the Garmin seemingly does not think about trees to be obstructions, so they are not represented at all on the graphical display. The uPro in Pro Mode shows every tree and hazard in fact, the complete hole, as photographed from satellite. It is like looking at my real course including my house! from above. There is totally nothing like it.

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

Battery: The Garmin and SG3 both take AA batteries, if 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 interior 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 did not take me anywhere near that long. UPro battery life is 6 12 hours, based on how bright you set the display’s backlight. With my display settings see Display, below, I easily finished a round with plenty to spare. As far as battery preferences go: For many, constantly recharging and changing out AAs is a grind. For others, recharging and sooner or later, re purchasing interior lithium ion batteries $27 for the uPro is just as bad, particularly 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 does not 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 almost same. The Garmin’s touchscreen display is almost iPhone big, and drop dead gorgeous.When you are at home. Take it outside, and it washes out to the point of uselessness. Worse still, to save power, the display times out some seconds after you touch it, making it 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 have to hit the “Done” button to exit that. There is no way to increase the screen timeout or disable the screen dimming feature. As well, since the Garmin is a touchscreen, it is a big fingerprint magnet, so it only looks pretty for the 1st hole. The uPro wins the display contest handily, with a bright and working screen. You may be able to play two ways: graphically Pro Mode, showing the course via aerial photography, or with big, bright alphanumeric text Basic Mode. Since golf courses have low contrast lots of green color and not much else, I defaulted to the Basic Mode for easy readability. For the aerial view, you may be able to generally hit the Pro Mode button on the side of the unit, as it is 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 till you hit a button, which is an huge buzzkill. Luckily, you may be able to get around this. You may change to a longer timeout, or disable standby completely. As the uPro has a bright display, what I did was take the backlight down to 25 from a default 70, and disabled standby totally. I easily finished a round with lots of battery life to spare this way. The uPro and the Garmin use a reflective LCD technology that really makes the display lighter in direct sunlight. The uPro’s variant 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 regular LCD would not compete with the reflective technology of the Garmin and the uPro. Wrong. The iPod destroyed both. It was not close. If you have an iPhone the iPod Touch will not do GPS, you may want to look into the golf GPS apps at the App Store. If you do choose to use an iPhone, just keep in mind it will not 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 is any misunderstanding you’re playing past the current hole, for example, it will ask you if you want to move to the next hole. If you are starting on Number 10, as an example, the SkyCaddie makes that selection easier also, with a grid from which you may be able to choose holes via cursor. The Callaway Auto Hole Advance is kind of a drag. If you are anywhere near the green, Auto Advance jumps to the next hole. You can not measure your 40 yard pitch to the current green. And when they say Auto, they mean Auto. In Auto Advance mode, there is no way to back up to the current hole, or any last hole, . 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 have to touch the screen arrows for each hole advance.

Settings: The Garmin gives you nearly nothing to customize, as it’s both intelligently intended and very automated. It could have been nice to be able to crank the screen light, or at least extend the timeout. Both the SG3 and the uPro give you a host of settings to mess with, as well as screen light contrast only with the SG3, hole advance preferences, and more.

Cost of ownership: The Garmin and uPro are color, so they are not cheap. If you want to compare apples to apples, you could go to the color SkyCaddie SG5, but be told that the SG3, SG4, and SG5 are virtually same in functionality, screen size just, EVERYTHING so you are paying nearly $150 more for color alone, which is the cost of a whole 20 inch color TV. My SG3 is discontinued, so now I am quoting price from the substitute 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 awful deal. To the SkyCaddie’s cost of ownership, add their totally outrageous yearly 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, comparatively reasonably priced cart mount for the Garmin. The uPro, while not requiring you to pay for a membership, makes you download each course.

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64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of five stars
Awesome increase in enjoyment of Golf game,
April 20, 2009

By&nbsp,George Madden Glenmoore, PA See all my reviews
REAL NAME
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My son and I used this on a local course for the 1st time and it performed great. No more looking for markers or taking the time to walk off an estimate er, OK particularly when I am not in the fairway. We have many big greens thankfully and being able to simply move the flag on the device for a more correct reading is super. As well, those not many great drives I had the G5 made it easy to get the exact yardage did not break any records though. Only one of my seven regular home area courses isn’t programmed in still but I see it is on schedule in the next update. If yours is not, simply let Garmin know like I did. Great unit, now if only my golf got better :

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

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42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of five stars
First impressions: Amazing!,
August 3, 2009

By&nbsp,Darwin “Computer consultant” Redmond, WA United States See all my reviews

it is Sunday night as I type this review. I have had my Garmin a total of three days now. It arrived on Friday, so I put in batteries, connected it to my PC, downloaded the OS upgrades and most current course file about a 76MB file. I played with the preview function, using it to check my local courses, and also checked out Warwick Hills, where Tiger stormed back on day two of the Buick Open. Cool being able to preview 1000s of courses across the country!

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and took it out to a course I had never visited before to see just how well this investment could pay off. Looking at the top down, color view of every hole from tee to green, I knew everything I required to know to reach the green in regulation it did not matter that I had not been here before.

On a par five with a sharp left dogleg, I used the Garmin to find out the distance to the center of the left bend. I touched the screen and pinpointed a spot 190 yds to the center of the fairway, with bunkers on the left. I grabbed my 3I hybrid and let ‘er rip. Perfect shot! Right in the center of the bend, and a straight shot at the green 250 yds away. A 3W got me to about 50 yds, , then a lucky little pitch and I was up and down for birdie!

A not many holes afterward, the Garmin showed me a par four that goes out straight and level for about 200 yds. There the fairway ends and it is about 100 yds up a hill to the right with about 20 yds elevation difference to the green. Again, I grabbed my 3I hybrid and whacked the ball about 190 yds just short of the fairway’s end. Then I grabbed my PW and knocked the ball up the hill to the elevated green and 2 putted for par. Sweet!

Eventually, it is the 18th hole par 4 and the great finale there’s water on the right and fronting the green, with bunkers on the left of the fairway and behind the green. The center of the green itself is about 260 yards off, and while the other three golfers in my foursome choose to break out their drivers and go for it, I used the Garmin to find out the best lay up point about 180 yds to the widest part of the fairway past the water. I grabbed my 4I hybrid, plopped the ball perfectly in the fairway, and I had an easy wedge shot to the green to par the hole, while two of my compadres flailed away in the bunkers, and the other digged his ball out of the deep rough beyond and left of the green I was wanting to share my Garmin with them, but they’d all played the course before and “knew” what to do!.

Those are the three “highlight” holes of my 1st round at this course. The Garmin does everything but hit the ball that part is still left for me to do, and, unfortunately, I do not generally hit the ball so perfectly, or there could have been more highlights!

Nonetheless, the Garmin was the perfect aide for course management, and I know it saved me some number of strokes. Though I had never visited this course before, every time I walked up to the tee box I has been filled with confidence because I knew exactly what club to use and where to aim. I could see the form and depth of every green, and I knew where my margin of error was when making my approach.

Sunday morning, I got up early again and took the Garmin out to a course I visited some number of times before. Unfortunately for me, my shots were rather discrepant, to say the least, and I shot a depressing round. But, that was completely my fault the Garmin was still an excellent guide during. On the rare occasion I did hit my shot straight and true, my distances perfectly coincided with what the Garmin telled me. And again, every time I made an approach shot, I knew the depth of green and the places of the hazards, and if I should err long or short, left or right.

Additionally, I should talk about that I have had a competitor’s golf GPSR for a couple years now. It is been adequate for the job and was half the initial buy price of the Garmin, but it was missing in many ways because it:

Obliged an yearly subscription to download courses,

Only held ten courses in memory at a time, so I could have to connect to my computer and download courses if venturing out of my “home” area,

Only showed distances to a few of landmarks, e.G. Bunker, end of fairway, water hazard, etc.,

Had a monochrome LCD,

Wasn’t a Garmin I admit, I have a pro Garmin bias, as I have had two of their hand held GPSRs and an in car unit, all of which I have been impressed and pleased with!

On the flip side, the Garmin:

Doesn’t require a subscription,

Gives a touch screen no confusing manual buttons that do different functions at different times,

Holds THOUSANDS of courses across the US,

Shows the complete hole from tee to green with bunkers, hazards, and distances obviously marked,

Has a COLOR display,

Lets me to target particular places through the fairway, with distance to the target from my current place and left over distance to the green from the target.

Both units were just equivalent in the following ways, both good and bad:

Display form of green,

Display front, center, and back green distances,

Let motion of pin place for more correct estimate to pin itself,

Last about two complete rounds using AA rechargeable batteries,

Let measuring of shot distance,

Don’t display trees or another obstacles,

Don’t display elevation changes.

I am very pleased with my initial experiences with the Garmin Approach this weekend. I will be using it on many more outings this summer and fall, but I particularly look forward to visiting more new courses. Now that I am not constrained to ten courses in memory at a time, I can pick up and go anywhere on a whim, and with the great top down view of the complete hole from tee to green I will know exactly where to aim and what club to hit, as if I have visited the course dozens of times before.

A not many other notes:

I didn’t use the scorekeeping function I favor to use a real scorecard to track many stats.

Have to change batteries in the center of a round? The unit will remember what “page” you were on and return you to it.

Manually navigating the holes when previewing a course is a bit awkward there are “next” and “previous” buttons on the page, but no way to jump from, the first hole to the 14th without pressing the “next” button 13 times. I think Garmin could improve this by popping up a menu if the user were to press and hold the “next” button as an example. This could also be a big help if the course you are visiting decides to flip the front nine to the back 9, so you may be able to start on the right hole.

In the Settings page, the unit allows you to enter what kind of batteries you are using, e.G. Alkaline, NiMH rechargeable, etc. Inquisitive.

When previewing a course, go to the “about course” hole number button to see the address and phone number of the course, convenient for making your tee time!

The capability to target anywhere on or about the fairway is EXCELLENT! Most GPSRs just give you the distance to the green front/center/back, but that does you no good if you have got a tree or another obstacle in the way. Knowing what the distance is to any part of the hole can really save your bacon when you find yourself blocked and have to get back to the fairway.

The map will zoom in automatically as you’re playing the hole, showing your current position a golf ball and the left over fairway to the green, so you aren’t stuck with a view of the complete hole as you approach the green.

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23 Responses to “garmin approach g5”

1. Lillian F. Says:
   May 1, 2009 at 0:22 pm

   Closeout prices aren’t a better deal so no point in waiting, buy it now.

2. Christina O. Says:
   May 2, 2009 at 4:40 pm

   Compare garmin approach prices here or on ebay, is my best guess

3. Tony W Says:
   May 3, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   I did try Ebay, no deals worth mentioning

4. Jonathan R Says:
   May 4, 2009 at 7:12 pm

   Is price of garmin approach g5 lower online than in Costco

5. Jimmy A Says:
   May 5, 2009 at 11:26 pm

   Couldnt find any garmin approach g5 deals in San Antonio

6. Stephanie J. Says:
   May 6, 2009 at 2:39 pm

   i buy it at Walmart store that had a lowest price, but usually online deals are better

7. Elizabeth W. Says:
   May 7, 2009 at 11:19 pm

   Clearance prices aren’t much more discounted than this so may as well buy it now.

8. Samuel J Says:
   May 8, 2009 at 11:57 pm

   Where can i find a coupon for garmin approach g5 valid in Boston

9. Blanche Says:
   May 9, 2009 at 10:22 pm

   I am selling it in Los Angeles area if anyone is interested, great price.

10. Buford Says:
    May 10, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    What’s garmin approach compared to other golf?

11. Theron Says:
    May 11, 2009 at 6:23 pm

    Where can you get it used online?

12. Shirley U. Says:
    May 12, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    garmin approach g5, great buy for the money

13. Clarence U Says:
    May 13, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    Generally the best offer for garmin approach can usually be found at an net dealer or ebay

14. Brenda J. Says:
    May 14, 2009 at 4:38 pm

    I checked Amazon and they dont have any wholesale deals are there any wholesale deals online?

15. Domingo Says:
    May 15, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    Well wholesale may have it cheaper than Circuit city or Ebay

16. Jeffery G Says:
    May 16, 2009 at 0:49 pm

    Pros: Great product for the low price. Cons: Difficult to find in stock

17. Wanda W. Says:
    May 17, 2009 at 6:41 pm

    Those are mostly specs, but is there a review?

18. Diane O. Says:
    May 18, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    Where online can you find it used?

19. Graciela Says:
    May 19, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    Cant beat online deals for garmin approach, plus free shipping at most stores over a certain amount

20. Caleb Says:
    May 20, 2009 at 9:45 pm

    It’s one of the better golf out there. Good Pricing.

21. Emily W. Says:
    May 21, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Check Amazon reviews

22. Liz Says:
    May 22, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    Amazon or Ebay generaly have a low price than an outlet

23. Tina N. Says:
    May 23, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    Don’t think closeout prices are a deal, i would buy it now.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 6:47 am and is filed under Golf. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.