A Decent GPS Golf Watch Doesn’t Have To Be Expensive

It’s very easy to find a highly functional, very cool GPS golf watch if you’re willing to spend $300 and up. Garmin, Bushnell, Voice Caddy and others all have excellent options, many of which will double as an everyday smart watch.

But if you’re balling on a sub-$200 budget, well, let’s just say there’s a fine line between inexpensive and cheap. In that price range, you’ll have to give up stuff. It could be quality and durability, it could be features, or it could be something else, but you will give something up.

Sorry, but that’s life in the big city.

Shot Scope’s new G6 GPS golf watch might just make that big city life a little more tolerable. At $179.99 (CAD $199.99), it provides you all the basics you need to play golf, plus an extra or two that’s rare (but not unheard of) in the under $200 price range.

Shot Scope G6: Full-color “how fars”

Shot Scope, my friends, is the “how far” business, as in, “how far am I away from that pin?” or “How far to clear this bunker?”

It’s also in the “how far” analytics business, as in “How far did I hit my driver on 16?” and “How far am I away from being a 5 handicap?”

The new Shot Scope G6 GPS golf watch has your basic “how fars” covered. It’s a simple GPS-only watch that includes full-color, full-hole mapping at a price you won’t have to explain to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Shot Scope G6 is a significant upgrade over its predecessor. The G5, which came out in July of 2023, was an ultra-simple GPS golf watch. It gave you the basics, like Front-Middle-Back distances plus dogleg, layup and hazard front and carry distances. It featured large, easy-to-read numbers in several color choices and a scorecard function. if you’re into accessorizing, it also offered a bunch of different colored watch straps to choose from.

The new G6 offers you all that with one significant upgrade: Full color hole mapping. You’ll get an overhead view of each hole with distances overlaid to give you an idea of what club you might want to hit.

Perhaps best of all, it’s ridiculously simple to use. It doesn’t bog you down with pseudo-smart watch features, options or subscription costs. The Shot Scope G6 GPS Golf watch is what it is.

A basic “how far” device.

Behind the watch face

Well, there is a little bit more to it than that. Like its predecessor, the Shot Scope G6 GPS golf watch comes loaded with 36,000 golf courses worldwide. Those course details are maintained by Shot Scope’s in-house mapping team. There’s also a built-in scorecard and a post-round summary that tells you how long it took to play as well as your score.

The Shot Scope G6 weighs in at 42 grams. It’s roughly the same size as the Garmin S44, but is just a tiny hair thicker. Shot Scope says the battery is good for at least two full rounds in GPS mode.

The watch mode is where one of those sacrifices we discussed earlier comes into play. Shot Scope does offer a handful of watch faces you can choose, with the idea that you could wear the G6 as an everyday watch. We find the monochromatic watch faces to be a little too dark to read, particularly in the sunlight. That’s odd, because when it’s in GPS mode, the G6 is plenty bright enough and very easy to read in the sun.

You don’t need to have your phone handy to use the G6 in GPS mode. You do, however, need to connect to the Shot Scope app via Bluetooth for course and firmware updates.

Where the G6 fits in the Shot Scope universe

 As we said, Shot Scope is in the “how far” business. Within that business, it has three separate “how far” business units. The first is Shot Scope’s bread and butter: shot tracking and data analysis. Lots of companies do this well, but none do it as well as Shot Scope. It’s V5 and X5 GPS watches collect your shots automatically via special tags screwed into your grips. The Shot Scope app turns that information into digestible and actionable data.

If watches aren’t your thing, Shot Scope gives you data collection options. The H4 is a small hand-held GPS unit that collects data from tags. The Shot Scope Connex system collects data using tags and the Shot Scope phone app.

Shot Scope is also a presence in the value-priced laser rangefinder market. It has five models ranging from Pro L2 at $149.99 to the ProLX+, with shot tracking capabilities, at $369.99.

The Shot Scope G6 GPS golf watch simply rounds out the lineup. It’s not meant to replace or take away from any of Shot Scope’s other products. If you’re a GPS watch person who wants to collect data, you have the X5 and V5. Prefer a rangefinder? You have options there.

If you just want a watch to tell you “how far,” the G6 is about as simple as it gets.

The Shot Scope G6 GPS golf watch is available now at select retailers and at shotscope.com.

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