Review: iGolf Neo

I searched the forum and didn’t see any full reviews on the iGolf Neo, so I thought I would share my experience. I bought this unit for $149 + tax at Golfsmith the other day (came to $160), and it comes with the unit, belt clip, usb cable and wall charger that the usb cable plugs into, plus software. This product is readily available on ebay for $149 shipped without tax, but I didn’t want to wait three or four days for it to arrive, so I went out and bought it. Of all the stores I called, only Golfsmith carried it, and three of the four Golfsmiths I called didn’t have it in stock. The one in Bridgewater NJ did.

The unit has an internal rechargeable battery, and it came out of the box with a 60% battery charge, which would be more than enough of a charge to get through a round if you wanted to map a course yourself, or just check shot distances. Other than that, there’s not much you can do with it on a golf course without downloading courses. Membership to iGolf runs $35 which gives you 100 courses to download, which are yours to keep and use on other iGolf units you may have. You have a year to download the 100 courses. After that, you don’t have to subscribe anymore, but can’t download any more courses from them unless you do. You can play what you already have, and if the courses change, you’ll have to map the change yourself or re-subscribe. As far as I can tell, there is no guarantee that they will have the updated info anyway, but you can contact them and request a remap. I likely won’t resubscribe unless I know I am going to play a course that I absolutely need the yardages to. I can always play them the old fashioned way.

The unit holds 10 courses at a time, is fairly small, and could easily fit on your pocket. I usually walk with a push cart, and chose to clip it to my bag since I normally have a bunch of stuff in my pockets already (score card, pencil, a couple tees, divot tool, ball marker, and of course, two balls….). The clip is a little flimsy, but it did not fall out in the one round that I played with it. I don’t think I would trust it clipped on my belt for a round, but even if it was sturdier, wouldn’t want it on my belt. It took less than a minute to locate the satellites, and it never lost them during my round. I played a links style course, so I can’t comment on reception in the trees. Once it’s on, you to push the OK button once to ‘play golf’, use the arrows to select the course, then push OK again, and it takes you to the first hole. Here is the default screen for each hole (*Note* the backlight is on in this pic, the screen protector is still on, and I took it from my house, three and a half miles from the course)

You cannot change the default screen for the start of each hole, so you have to push the screen button on the bottom to cycle through the four screen options, which in order are 1) default - just to the center, as seen above, 2) Center front and back, 3) Center, custom 1 and 2, and 4) Center, custom 3 and 4. I’d prefer to be able to change the default to Center custom 1 and 2, which would show you the fairway bunkers, hazards, etc, but it was not a big deal for me. Here’s a pic of the center front and back.

When you go to the next hole, you have to push the arrow up button which takes you to the default, then you’d have to push the screen button twice to get to the center custom 1 and 2 screen. Each hole has Center, Front and Back, plus four custom points. The courses that I’ve downloaded so far have all of the greenside bunkers preset, and usually a fairway bunker or hazard is preset as well. These are in place of the custom points, and you can change them if you want. Mapping a hole or changing a custom point is not hard, but involves pushing several buttons for the custom points. When on the hole, you push the esc/shot button and it takes you to map hole, push OK, select which point you want of the seven available (C,F,B, Custom1-4), select whether you want to use a preset name (creek, hazard, bunker, etc), you can name it yourself, or just register the point. If you name it yourself, it’s a pain to do because you can only navigate the letters with the arrow buttons, (as seen on the next pic) and you have to first delete what already there (EOF, CSTM1, etc). You cannot change the name for front, center or back. It takes a while to do, but you can do that while you are walking to the point, then just register the point when you are there. What I did on a few holes was set that up while others teed off, then registered the point when I got to it.

If you are going to map a course, it will take some time and you have to push a bunch of buttons. If you’re by yourself, or if you ride, it may not be so bad, but it is time consuming. The good thing is that if you do just register the points, you can upload it to your PC at home and change the names there, and re-download it to the unit. Also, if you already know what you want to register, you can name them ahead of time and register it on the course. That would make it much quicker to mp a course. You still have to re-upload it to your PC though to make sure you have a backup copy.

To measure the distance of a shot, push the ok/shot button from the start point, push it again to confirm, then again when you get to your ball. It will show the distance to center plus shot distance the whole time while it counts up yardage to your ball. After you get to the ball (or whatever you are measuring the distance of), and after you push the OK button again to confirm the shot distance, you push the esc/menu button to go back.

Overall, I am pretty happy with the Neo. A lot of times I just referred to the front center and back numbers, and knowing the correct yardage gave me a lot of confidence in the club I selected for the distance, as any GPS and rangefinder will do. The yardages were very accurate for my course. Once I have all of the points mapped the way I want, it will severely reduce the amount of button pushing per hole. It’s by no means a hands free unit, but it’s not terrible either. With a 100% charge, a 4 hour round left me with a 90% charge. I did not use the backlight feature for this round.
I considered the Sonocaddie XV2 as well, but I wanted to use the GPS soon, and Golfsmith did not have the XV2 in stock. If they had it, I likely would have bought it because it was $250 and there is no subscription fee. I’m $195 into the Neo, so the extra $55 may have been worth it, only to see all of the yardages on one screen instead of cycling through. I don’t personally care about the scorecard feature if I cannot count putts per hole, fairways hit, etc, on the unit itself. The v300 has it, but is much more expensive and requires a subscription. If you have any questions, shoot away!!

http://thesandtrap.com/equipment/acc...neo_gps_review

Interesting, I didn't even know about that part of the site. What a coincidence that the review was put up last week. Oh well, maybe it will help someone else.

Your's was quite a well written review, and combined with the site's review gives a complete overview on functions and operation not covered individually. Thanks for taking the time to write it