Garmin S60 vs S62

One Golfer’s Opinion of the Garmin Approach S62

George R – Los Alamos, NM

We’ve had a lot of requests for this. People have been asking me to take it out on the course. You’ve seen me unbox this thing and if you haven’t watched that video I unboxed it and showed you all the features of this watch. I’ll put the video link right here, but today we’re actually to take this out on the course to check it out, especially its battery life.

I’m going to show you how it works and we’ll do a little playing test with the Garmin Approach S62. So we just got to the course here so I’m going to go ahead and hit this red action button up at the top and it says play golf. It is going to now locate the satellites for me. Now that we have located the satellites and it automatically brings you up a course view of the different courses that you might be playing here. We’re going to go ahead and select Carrollwood Country Club because that is where I’m standing right now. We’ve got a little loading course button. It first asks you do you want to keep score? I do want to keep scoring my round. Now it will ask me what tees I want to play. I will be playing the white tees today.

So now you can see the hole here, it’s about 491 yards away. You’ve got all the different golfing features of the course. You’ve got some water short left here off the tee you’ve got bunkers all around the right side but it is a pretty straight away par-5 as you can see. It’s bouncing around the numbers a little. That tends to happen with a GPS watch, which is pretty normal.

The thing is you don’t use a GPS watch for pinpoint accuracy, you use it to estimate distance within two to three yards, give or take. This type of scenario at least that’s what I’ve come to find. So there you go, that’s the outline of the course. Let’s go ahead and hit a shot and see how this thing does. What will happen now is it’s gonna ask me what club did I use. I used a driver so I will input that. I am actually walking today. As I walk it’s actually going to count down the distance and you’ll see your distance from the tee shot or from whatever your previous shot was.

So that’s how this golf watch works: it actually senses the swing and it’s very accurate on knowing if it’s for practice or for real. It senses your swing and then it asks you what club you used, that’s how it tracks the club. It has an automated caddy feature after you play five rounds with this watch it actually starts to suggest clubs for you! As you’re walking not only is it giving you the distance to the hole but up it is also telling you the distance from your last shot. I’m coming up on my ball here this was not a very good effort and that was a 209 yard drive. It will actually record that when I take my next stroke. It will actually know exactly where I took that second swing from and that’s how it knows where your first ball landed.

Now I have some cart path here I can take relief pick that up and a place of here a club length into the fairway then we shall hit our second shot. I’m gonna pull a 3-wood here because I need a little distance after that that was not a very good drive, but what happens when you don’t warm up. OK, that was a really nice shot! Once more it is asking me for club selection. As you can see while I am walking that it is counting up on top of the display how far I hit it. Again, I did not hit that very well. I guess we’re looking at about 178 yard 3-wood, not my best day out here.

Now I’ve got 106 yards to the middle and I’ve got 94 to the fro of the green. That’s actually a front pin placement there. I can see that from here so I am going to guess that’s about five yards from the front. The watch tells me 94 yards to the front so we are going to try to hit like a 99 to 102 yard shot. That’s going to be a little eighty percent pitching wedge for me and let’s see how we do. I will tell you what, there’s definitely some wind down here which I have not realized and that’s why all my distances are short. That one came up short as well, just on the fringe there on the apron.

So I’m just off the green. Again we will know what the distance of that shot was by the time I make this little chip. What I found really awesome about this thing is it actually knows on chips if it was a practice swing for the chip or an actual making of contact. I’m guessing there’s some vibration in the ball that sends a signal to the watch don’t really know how it works but it just does work which is pretty cool. I guess I hit that shot about I don’t know 95 yards because I’m about 10 yards from where I wanted to be. We’ll see if we can hit a little nice little chip and get it close to the pin. The watch is saying I hit 94 yards. OK, we got a little tap-in par.

Once you hit the green it automatically goes to the scoring view so it’s gonna ask me what my score was. How many putts I had is the next question. I only had one putt and then it’s gonna ask if I hit the fairway or miss right or left.

I’ll give you one more hole to see how this golf watch works. No worries about its battery life! All right, so I’ve got a little walk here to the second hole here at Carrollwood. Let me tell you a few things I love about this watch. I love the fit and finish. I have tried on a number of golf GPS watches this is by far the best-looking watch. I would absolutely wear this watch and I’m a watch guy, I love Rolex, Omega, and high-end Swiss watches. This honestly fits right in my collection, it is a beautiful sports watch that I can use on the golf course.

I can use the golf watch while I’m working out to track my steps or if I’m running it also tracks your heart rate. You can play music with this gizmo and you can see notifications. It doesn’t actually work like an Apple watch where you can actually talk into the watch that’s not gonna happen with this one but you can receive notifications.I actually like to turn all those notifications off because when I want a golf course I want to concentrate. I want to have fun and I want to disconnect from the world a little, that’s why I love golf.

I just hit a little draw that should have gotten a little extra roll. I’m hoping that’s at least 235 yards or so. Here’s the thing: if you forget to tell it which club you hit it’ll stay on that screen until you do. If you forget between this swing and the next swing it will just skip it. Don’t worry, you can’t break it. If you want to track every single shot in order to understand how you are playing, then this app will show at the end. You want to make sure you’re present in the moment and you actually hit the button. The thing can’t read your mind! I told it that I hit a driver, as you can see we’re counting up as we walk up on top there and the distances are getting closer to the hole as we move forward. That was a beautiful shot, right in the middle of the fairway 233 yards from the tee box. I’ve now got a 108 yard shot to the green. That pin is in the middle of the green, at least that’s what it looks like to me so anyway and I’m going to hit a pitching wedge. We do have some wind so I got to hit a 100% pitching wedge. It is about my 125 yard club. There is about a 10 mile an hour wind down here so we’ll see what we can do.

It was a good strike and that is the middle of the green! Again, it is asking me what did I hit there. It assumes I hit a gap wedge because that usually is my pitching wedge. We have a little more wind and I do not have a gap wedge anymore in my bag so it was a pitching wedge. So again it is asking me how many strokes I had. I did have a par but if I had a bogey then I go up or down for a birdie. I had a four. Next, this is how many putts I hit. I had two putts, again you go up or down on putts. I hit the center of the fairway, I had zero penalties and I’m off and running to the next hole. I love this golf watch! It is like having a virtual caddy.

A couple of other features:

you can actually move the flag

, so if you know where the flag is which I know that flag actually the flag is about there you use the manual pin position feature to move it to where you think it is. That’s a great feature! You can change the hole, you’ve got your scorecard so you can see how you’ve been doing.

I love this manual pin position feature, it just shows you where the pin is in relation to where you are so it just helps you if you have a blind shot. That’s a super cool golf watch! The wind has died down here, it’s now four miles per hour in our face. We actually have Club stats here, but I haven’t uploaded enough scorecards to Garmin yet.It may require Garmin pay?

So hopefully that gives you a good idea

of how this golf watch performs on a real golf course, how you keep score, how it knows what distance and what club you hit. The Garmin Approach S62 actually works very well. There have been very few times have I ever made a swing and it didn’t register, that’s really a rarity for sure it does happen. It also has more than enough battery life for an entire round.

I really love this golf watch, like I said, distances seem to be very accurate if you’re okay with being within that three yard give or take zone. If you need pinpoint distances I would recommend the Garmin Z82 which is my favorite golf gizmo of the year.

Photo Gallery

battery life	virtual caddie
wind speed	golfing features
garmin golf watches	premium features
longer battery life	Garmin Approach S62
Garmin golf watch	battery life