Don't get the "White" Garmin S4 GPS Watch

[halliedog]

Unless you plan on wearing it strictly for Golf!

 

I just picked up a Garmin S4 watch since they started reducing them down to less than $200. I thought the white looked better than the black, so took that one. Wore it for a 10 hour work day today, and it looked horrible! Took it right back and exchanged for the black one. I originally decided to go golf watch over Laser because I wanted/needed a new everyday watch. This thing seems fine, but can't be rubbing down with Chlorex wipes every day!

 

Side notes:

- Didn't need the extra functions of the S6, but S5 is virtually unavailable. That (S5) would have been nice, with the "whole hole" view.

- Pairing up your phone for "e-notifications" of texts/emails seems nice, but uses more battery life than Golf GPS on it's own.

- You WILL be required to hook it up to a PC on the first use, and can only download course data by continent. (Don't believe all that crap they say about 38,000 INTERNATIONAL courses). They are available, but not built in. Apparently the memory can't hold more than one continent. Not a huge deal, as I play most of my golf on one continent, but if I wanted to travel to Asia I'd have to wipe out my American courses and wait 8-10 minutes to download the Asian ones.

 

Mike at Golfsmith was a pleasure to deal with, and made the exchange easy, but just saying, think twice about white!

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[LAslicer]

I've found this to be true with all athletic white watches that I've seen. They are going to get dirty and start looking dull. A friend of mine had a white Nike watch for running and it did the same thing, so I always go with black or a darker color. I didn't know about the course memory and the garmin. I've only seen the skycaddie watch at the store when I was deciding on a watch or the handheld touch model, but their watches are able to hold all of the courses world-wide.

[halliedog]

Yes, I should have guessed on the white, but it seemed to have a "glossy" finish that I thought might hold up better, lesson learned.

 

I can't tell exactly what information it retains in memory to be honest. Just know that upon opening both the White and Black units and plugging into PC, they wanted to check for firmware/course updates. About a minute into the updates I got a message saying that "there wasn't enough memory to download all courses, please select continent." (Paraphrasing, but led me to believe the device can only hold say N. America, S. America, or Asia at one time?

 

Anyway, I'm now wondering if they (Golfsmith) will accept ANOTHER return/exchange as I got an email this morning stating that Garmin has just announced the upcoming release of the new S20! About the same price point and from what I can gather the same golf/smart notification (texts/emails/calls) functionality, but has longer battery life, some limited "fitness tracking" (not really interested at all in that), Since it has not been officially released and not in stores, I can't say for sure, but from pictures it appears to be slimmer and more like an "everyday" watch, witch I will be using it for. It's not touchscreen, but I don't really care about that. My plan is to return this thing tomorrow, not ask for money back but just a gift card, and wait until the S20 hits stores in early February, and see which I like best. That way they are still getting the sale, might just be a different model.

 

**edit** The Skycaddies SHOULD keep all info on your device sine they are charging you a yearly subscription, at least in my opinion.

[LAslicer]

I'm betting there will be a good amount of new watches come out soon since the pga show is going on. The skycaddie watches are free to use, its the more advanced models that require a membership. Good luck on the return/exchange!