Garmin makes some of the best smartwatches for all kinds of activities (so much so that we even rank all of the best Garmin watches on their own). Running might be the first sport people think of for Garmin watches, but the company's golf watch line also includes some of the most feature-packed, well-made watches on the market.
The Garmin Approach S50 is one of Garmin's newest models, and it's designed to offer many of the same features as the expensive Approach S70 but at a slightly more wallet-friendly price.
At $400, it strikes a perfect balance between features and value. I tested it at PGA National in Palm Beach, FL. While I've long said Arccos is the best Apple Watch golf app, the Approach S50 almost makes me want to ditch the trackers and my Apple Watch in favor of Garmin.
All the features you need and more
Like other Garmin golf smartwatches, this one comes with all the course details you need when playing your round. Having all of the bunker locations on your wrist really helps with course management.
I made some club decisions I don't think I would have without the Garmin S50 telling me where how far the bunkers were. Rather than being aggressive with a 3-wood, knowing there was a bunker on the right side right around my 3-wood range (my miss is to the right), I clubbed down to a 5-wood and came up safely short of the bunker.
Another feature I really enjoy as an Arccos user is the automatic shot detection. While it doesn't know what club you're hitting without the sensors (Garmin has its own sensors, but I didn't have them during testing), it still knows when you took a shot, which made scorekeeping a lot easier during the round in which I used the smartwatch.
You can tweak plenty of settings to make your round more enjoyable. If you want to log whether you hit the fairway, how many putts and other details about your score, you can.
Or you can turn those off and just enter how many strokes you took. I preferred the former, as I like having more detailed stats, but more options are always nice.
One small issue
As much as I love the Garmin Approach S50 smartwatch, it's not perfect. Playing in the Florida sun, I found that the 1.2-inch screen could have been a little brighter.
Most of the time, I could see it well enough, but in direct sunlight, I found that I had to shield the watch a little to make out details like distance to the front of a bunker or where a water hazard was.
For big things on the screen, like distance to the front, center and rear of the green, I never had a problem. It's just the smaller text on the screen that could be a little easier to see in bright light.
Garmin Approach S50: Outlook
While I need to investigate the smartwatch's non-golf features to write a full review, I have to say that its golf features are tremendously well-made, albeit a bit complicated to use.
Once you get used to them, having course information on your wrist is valuable. Knowing where each bunker, water hazard and other nasty thing on the course is will significantly help your golf game (and perhaps your playing partners when they come looking to you for the numbers they don't have on their lesser smartwatches).
If you're looking for a golf watch with fitness tracking features and aren't prepared to spend $700 on the Approach S70, this is the model to get. If you don't need the fitness tracking features and only want golf tracking, you might want to consider the even cheaper Approach S42 (review coming soon).
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