OnPar Review

[highhandicapper]

I just saw a review of the OnPar posted on Critical Golf - I was leaning toward the OnPar, but now I'm wondering if I should wait until I see some feedback on the Garmin...Anyone have any experience with it yet? So many choices! So little time before the season begins in earnest!

 

http://criticalgolf.com/?page_id=3198

[nas1021]

my course has the garmins on the carts. they are very simple, they give you the yardage to the front middle and back of greens, plus to carry water, bunkers, and other hazards. highly recommend and easy to use,

[x100]

You must be talking about the golflogix unit, he's talking about the new garmin approach g5. Totally different animal.

[nas1021]

ooo, sorry

[slightdraw]

ive have been able to spend a little time with the onpar, and have a couple of comments fwiw

 

- for those who are thinking that the screen will be anywhere near as responsive as an iphone or blackberry, you will be sorely disappointed. its okay, but not anywhere near the level of the high-end phones.

- it may seem minor but i cant believe that when you would zoom in on a bunker or something and then set the target point (to make it quite accurate), that the distance to that point from where you are or the distance to the green will often not be on the screen, so you have to zoom back out to be able to read the yardages. so if you want to keep from having to spend lots of time zooming in and out, you have to assume that the accuracy is good enough when zoomed out and you touch a spot.

- the battery life is fair (but probably normal for a device with a screen like this), probably a couple of rounds max before you would need to recharge.

- i got an error message like on a windows machine and then i had to power it off and on again. that stunk.

- the navigation is super simple and it is nice to have hole views. since it isnt an actual satellite view like the upro or some of those iphone golf gps applications have, there can be important stuff missing - like on the course i played there were trees that come into play that arent on the graphic, so i couldnt get the distances to them, which was a bummer.

 

hopefully at least some of the drawbacks of it can be fixed just through software updates. im not sure how much is hardware v software (any engineers here who can talk about what goes into these touchscreens?).

some people may think it is pricy, but since there arent any fees every year, its not that bad. i think normal for the high end gps units.

[Q-Ball]

Unfortunately the can not fix the fact USGA wont approve it for tournaments because of the club selection function

[slightdraw]

I just saw a review of the OnPar posted on Critical Golf - I was leaning toward the OnPar, but now I'm wondering if I should wait until I see some feedback on the Garmin...Anyone have any experience with it yet? So many choices! So little time before the season begins in earnest!

 

http://criticalgolf.com/?page_id=3198

 

its kind of a loss to me why they included the club selection function - i agree with the review in that regard. i guess some people may like it but that sure is a high cost to not be able to use it in tournaments (or technically even if you want to be able to post your score to use for a usga handicap).

 

i think the ability to see the high/low and average distance of each club you track is interesting - not sure if that is a violation of usga rules though. do you happen to know?

[b81smith]

I don't know why its a violation of any rules, pro's have their stats all tracked down to the inch by a variety of computers and people and number crunchers with launch monitors and track man and blah blah blah, that is all bull if the average guy can't take something in his pocket that does only one function, tell you the average distance of every club you hit.... anyhow it doesn't account for wind, temp, feet above sea level, humidity, etc etc that go into scoring well versus hitting the correct average distance, LOL.

 

Plus so far in my own experiance, the use of any distance measuring device has been prohibited anywhere I play in tournaments - so it doesn't matter what you have....you can't use it - period.

[Gsco]

- it may seem minor but i cant believe that when you would zoom in on a bunker or something and then set the target point (to make it quite accurate), that the distance to that point from where you are or the distance to the green will often not be on the screen, so you have to zoom back out to be able to read the yardages. so if you want to keep from having to spend lots of time zooming in and out, you have to assume that the accuracy is good enough when zoomed out and you touch a spot.

 

 

This is a huge pain and may seem minor but it's not. It requires several more steps to see yardage. It has potential, but the team needs to rethink their design and update it to make it less frustrating to use. Adding points to targets before mapping the new courses would be a start.

[johnye]

Anyone have any success (OnPar GPS) with getting a course mapped, that originally wasn't available? The website support FAQ indicates the process is suppose to take 10-14 days.

[WishICouldPlayMoreOften]

OnPar will be a slow seller because of its high price and the fact that it cannot be used in tournaments. The inclusion of club-suggestion on the device is baffling.

 

As for the rules of golf prohibiting measuring devices and measuring devices with additional information, that's just plain silly. Casual golfers don't play with caddies so any efficient, automated way to give them a course information and speed up play should be encouraged. And the use of GPS for golf will no impact on people who have a "unique relationship" with a caddie.

[toddnt]

Bump

[Miker195]

The OnPar is a nice device but it will run into a lot trouble trying to get this up and running strong, in the market place as there are very few courses available to download. You have to request your courses that are not available and your home course does get priority, however you may wait more than a month for that one and may not have any others near your area for months. This device arrived way to early on the market. I have one now and still do not have a course that is available that is within 25 miles. There are probably 65 courses or more within a 25 mile radius and only 1 available that I don't play. So needless to say BEWARE there may not be enough courses available to dowload. Check the web site prior to making a purchase to see the courses that are ready to download. Don't be confused as you will see hundreds of courses on the web site. You have to look at the far right column that states if they are available to download. A majority are not available.

 

It took about 6 weeks to get my home course made available. There are another 20 courses in my area that I would like to be made available. I doubt it will happen this year or season. OnPar has made a huge blunder putting it on the market 1 year too early. The customer support however is second to none. They are doing an OUTSTANDING job responding to complaints and issues. However, it's still not enough to compensate for a product they are asking close to $500. The product cannot be utilized to it's the extent they publish. BIG MISTAKE FOR ONPAR.