I've been using my Skycaddie SG2.5 now for over 13 months and think it is one of the best purchases I have made other than new golf clubs. Many people are still unsure whether a GPS device will be something they find useful - I hope this review will convince you!
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Almost all golf courses have markers of some sort to indicate how close you are to the green. Every one that I have played has had a 150 yard marker, and most have had 100. They do differ though in that some courses this yardage is to the front of the green and some courses this is to the middle. I decided to get a Skycaddie after playing a few rounds with a friend who owned one. There are a huge number of positives from getting a GPS device which I'll go through, some advantages of getting a Skycaddie - and of course a few disadvantages I've come across.
Advantages of a GPS Device
Some of the advantages I knew about
1, You know exactly how far away from the green you are - this might sound stupid, but it is surprising how many courses have yardage markers that are out by 5 or 10 yards. 10 yards could be an entire extra club. If you have a GPS device you can ignore all those course markers and just play with what your Skycaddie tells you.
2, Of course sometimes you do stray off the fairway, and without GPS you are effectively guessing - especially if you are on another holes fairway! :-) Skycaddie has saved me a number of times (my driving isn't that bad - honest) and allowed me to get on the green with my second shot from some quite amazing positions by knowing the exact yardage and being able to confidently take the right club.
3, Skycaddie has distances to hazards as well as greens. This is great news for knowing how far you need to hit to clear a ditch, or what margin of error you can use if you are laying up.
4, One thing my Skycaddie has taught me is that I didn't hit it as far as I thought I did. Previously I thought I could hit my 7 iron 150 yards but using the functionality of Skycaddie you can mark your hitting position to see exactly the distance you hit it.
5, When you only have a course marker to work with, you don't actually realise how big a green is. Take the 10th hole at Theale golf club. The yardage marker says it is 150 to the front - a steady six iron to get on. What is doesn't say though is that the back of the green is 185 yards away which gives you a whole 35 yards to play with! This means you can comfortably be hitting a 5 iron in, or maybe even a 4 hybrid!
6, It can transform your short game. If you pair your Skycaddie with Dave Pelz's short game method of working out 3 distances for each of your wedges (4 for me PW, 50, 55 and 60 degree) you'll know exactly which club and swing length to use to get it close to the pin. It is quite amazing that Skycaddie has probably made the biggest difference for me from 100 yards in. When you are close to the pin, 5 yards can make the difference between one wedge and swing and another so getting your wedges and distances sorted are key.
Advantages of Skycaddie
1, Having a Skycaddie gives you all the advantages listed above, and a huge one which is particular to Skycaddie - you know the distances are going to be accurate! Not because their GPS is any better - but because someone has actually been around the golf course and marked every little detail out so you can download the course from the Skycaddie web site. This is in contrast to some of the companies that make the GPS devices and use satellite images to try to work out the distances between points. While these can of course sometimes be quite accurate I have compared my Skycaddie to someone else's device that we suspect did this and the differences were between 5 - 10 yards, again sometimes the difference between clubs. Golf is all about confidence, and if you aren't confident that your GPS device is giving you a correct distance then you might as well throw it away (or at least put it on eBay!)
I actually saw the Skycaddie man walking around Theale Golf Club mapping out the course. They take quite a lot of time doing each hole with every hazard which is very re-assuring.
Disadvantages of Skycaddie
1, Of course having people walk around courses mapping them out for users to download is a costly exercise and so Skycaddie charge a yearly membership fee to download their courses. The yearly membership fees start at around £30, which when you break that down into a weekly or per round cost - it isn't very much.
Overall
If you are thinking of getting a golf GPS device I'd definitely recommend you check out the Skycaddies. You can pick up a SG2.5 now for just over £100 brand new which is a real bargain. When I bought mine the only difference between the more expensive models were a colour screen although I think with software upgrades they do now have a bit of extra functionality such as birds eye views of each hole. Still - all I want to know is the distance to the front, middle and back of the green and for that the Skycaddie SG2.5 is perfect!