The PGA Show is when all of the golf companies get their new clubs and other gadgets into the hands of the industry. It's also when companies like Garmin drop awesome new high-tech golf gadgets.
We hit the Garmin booth and saw the company's new golf smartwatches, handheld GPS and shot tracker. While they all look like solid devices (including a price point that Garmin hadn't hit previously for its golf watches), the solar-powered S20 GPS handheld caught my attention with its unlimited battery life in the right conditions.
Garmin S20 solar-powered handheld
The new Garmin S20 stole the show for me. Thanks to its solar-powered battery, it offers the potential for unlimited battery life. The device also offers distances to the green on a high-contrast screen. This means you'll get precise distances to the back, front and center of the green without worrying about having another device to keep charged.
I checked it out in person. It's small enough to put in your pocket and comfortably fits in your hand. It has a built-in magnet, so you can stick it to your golf cart as you would with a rangefinder.
Another cool feature is the more than 43,000 preloaded courses. It can also wirelessly receive course updates through a paired phone. Pairing it with a phone lets you see wind information to help you pick the best shot.
The core golf features are pretty standard, but the solar-powered and sun-friendly screen is what made me take notice. Even when a bright light shines on the screen, I can read the distances without issue.
The Garmin S20 is available now for $299, which isn't a bad price compared with a smartwatch, which would sell for around the same amount. For old-school golfers who don't want to deal with charging and everything else that comes with a watch, this is a perfect device to consider, and I liked it in my brief hands-on time with it.
New Garmin watches and trackers
Garmin also showed off the new Approach S44 and S50 smartwatches and the Approach CT1 tracking devices (Garmin already had trackers that rival our favorite golf Apple Watch app, but these are much more affordable).
The new smartwatch models aren't reinventing the wheel. The S44 will let you see how to navigate bunkers, water hazards and layups with hazard view, a feature available on several other smartwatches. It'll also show you which club to use with distance readings to the green's front, middle and back.
Garmin's new S50 smartwatch adds PlaysLike distance, so you can better choose which club to use based on weather and other key course factors. It also has more fitness features such as wrist-based heart rate, preloaded activities, fitness age and more. It's a full-featured watch that also has all of the golf goodies for which Garmin's other models (like the top-of-the-line S70) are known.
The new CT1 shot trackers are far more affordable than the $299 Approach CT10 models.
They don't provide as much data, and you have to tap them to a Garmin watch to let the system know which club you're using, but for the lower price, golfers who just want an easy way to track their shots and get post-round data, this is a much lower barrier to entry at $99 for a set of 16 sensors.
