The Garmin Approach S3 joins the Approach G3 and S1 in helping golfers get a digital hand to get around the course in fewer shots.
The Approach S3 is a wristwatch, and is Garmin’s first touchscreen golf watch. It can keep track of your score, and provides yardage, layup distances, shot distance, and a view of shape and layout of the greens, along with yardage details to the front, back and middle sections of each green. In addition to this, players can drag the location of the flag around, allowing a more accurate yardage for approach shots.
The S3 is pre-loaded with course details of more than 27,000 courses – in the US, Europe, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. At the time of writing, that amounts to 843 Australian courses. More courses are being added in to Garmin database, and to update your Approach S3, or indeed any of Garmin’s Approach series, all needs be done is to download the Course View Updater application to a computer, and then connect the Approach device via USB. Voila, new course maps!
If you want to know just how much more than the yardage of the course you’ve walked, chasing hooked and sliced shots, then the inbuilt pedometer will tell you how far you’ve walked. Oh, and being a wristwatch-shaped kind of device, the Garmin Approach S3 also tells the time.
The Garmin Approach S3 is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which on a full charge provides up to 4 weeks battery life in watch mode, and 8 hours in GPS mode.
It will be available in two colours, white with red trim and black with red trim, each with the ability to have the background colour of the watch screen to black or white. The Garmin Approach S3 will go on sale in Australia in May, for an RRP of $399. Or you can buy the Garmin Approach S3 now from Amazon, for US$349.99.