TST Explores the ShotScope H4 (Stats Tracking Device) and Pro LX Rangefinder

[billchao]

59 minutes ago, Shindig said:

I used Gorilla Glue

Like the original Gorilla Glue, or just a glue made by Gorilla Glue (the company)? They make a bunch of different types of adhesives, many of which I absolutely would not have recommended for Game Golf tags.

[Darkfrog]

20 hours ago, Shindig said:

 I'm curious how the tags work with my grips -- do I need to glue them in like I did with GG, and how do I remove the GG ones?

The shotscope tags hold well in the grip, but a bit of adhesive definitely helps. For Pure grips, I think adhesive is necessary since the grips material is more flexible/squishy than a grip like Golf Pride for example, and the threads don't seem to bite into the grip hole as much.

I use a generic silicone sealant/adhesive and it works fine. I've also used barge cement, and 3M emblem adhesive, which also worked, but are more of a pain to work with.

For certain types of putter grips, shotscope makes a tag without a screw but with double sided adhesive tape. I have this on my LAB putter with a strange grip, and my old Ping Anser with a pistol grip, and it has never come off.

I tried similar 3M automotive adhesive tape on the non-putter tags, but it is tedious to cut out the circle to the shape of the tag, and punch a hole in the center for the screw, but it held well.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Darkfrog

[boogielicious]

Shot Scope H4 GPS Performance Tracker Review

My overall first impression of the Shot Scope H4 is very positive. Setup was pretty straightforward. Game play was easy too once I got used to it. Downloading the round was easy and editing the round was ok on the iPhone.

The unit itself is pretty small. Below are the box and items that come with it.

 

Packaging was pretty basic, but that is all that is really needed. They give you 16 tags, Driver, Wood (3W), Hybrid, 4-PW, GW, SW and LW, putter plus two extras. I used a bit of Gorilla Silicone adhesive when I put them on. My putter has a weight insert, so I clipped the screw and glued it directly on the weight. I did this with GG and it never came off.

The charger cable, the thing that looks like a mini jumper cable, works with my iPhone charger. The unit charges quickly., less than an hour for 50% to 100% charge.

The unit is smaller than the GG Live unit. It comes with a belt clip cradle that has a magnet. The unit is pretty secure in the cradle.

There are four buttons, two on each side that are used to navigate and select. Here is the power on screen. You turn it on by pushing the top left button.

When it’s on, the check mark in the top right is adjacent to the top right button. This is how you acknowledge or accept commands. If I want to play, I push the top right button from this screen.

I found the display pretty easy to read even without my bifocals. I play with just distance glasses. I don’t have a shot of the unit on course, but will grab one next time I play.

After downloading the app, you need to connect to the device to sync them. It downloads new firmware at this time. This took about five minutes.

Setting up my bag was simple. On the app, you select each tag and assign your club from a drop down menu. You can set up a whole iron set in one pass. This was easier than GG.

When you turn on the unit and select play, it gives you three options, GPS & Track, GPS or Track. For my first test, I did GPS & Track. It took the unit about 30 seconds to get the course selected. When I downloaded the app, I synced the app to several of the courses I play. I will update any changes for me.

I found the GPS useful on course. It gives you middle, front and back green distance, which is handy. I also use a rangefinder and it helped tell my where the flag was on the green. There were a couple of pins close to the back, so I went with the center distance instead of the flag distance. This obviously helps when you can’t seen how far the pin is from the green sides. This was much easier than using my iPhone for a GPS. I just took the unit out of the magnetic cradle and gave it a quick look.

You can also get distance to and over hazards. I used it a couple of times, but on holes with more than one hazard, it wasn’t clear which one it was referring to.

Tagging is easy once you realize the face of the unit is where you tag, not the bottom like GG Live. You can confirm the tag by feeling a vibration. The screen also shows which club you tagged, which is helpful.

On the green, The H4 functions a little different than GG. On the green, the screen changes to a green mode. You tag the putts and when you hole out, you select the number of putts. I assumed that if I did this at the flag, it would mark the flag positions. But when editing after, it seemed to be off on some holes. I will read the user guide again to make sure of that.

At the end of the round, you select ‘End Round’. You don’t have to do this immediately. I did it at home. I used about 40% of the battery during the round (3:45 minutes). With my drive home and upload time, it was about 5 hours and I still had 46% battery left.

When you want to upload the round, you open the app and connect. When it finds the device, you then sync the app to the unit.

Editing the round was sort of intuitive. The user guide could be a bit more explanatory. You can add missed shots, penalty strokes (2 balls in the water Scott! 😜) and move shots. Moving location take one touch to select, then hold until a target is shown. Then you drag to the right location. I did this for a couple of missed tags and to move the pin. The user guide wasn’t very clear on this.

Overall, I am very pleased with the Shot Scope H4 so far. Things I liked:

1. Unit is small and easy to use on my belt.
2. GPS is an added bonus to just tracking.
3. You don’t need your phone on to use the GPS.
4. The magnetic cradle works well.
5. Setting up the bag was easy.
6. The unit found the course quickly.
7. Tagging is simple.
8. Editing, for the most part, is easy.

Improvements I can think of so far:

1. User guide could be a bit more explanatory on editing.
2. The unit doesn’t come with bag. I used one I had from another product.

I will keep posting with updates as I learn more and start using the stats. 

 

[Bob M]

@boogielicious - Good report on the H4! I am using the V3 (a watch) this season and have had similar positive experience to yours. My putter is also counter-weighted, but I have used the manual process which, as long as I remember to do it, is easy and straight-forward.

[dennyjones]

I found editing the round on my PC to be much easier than my phone.   Great review @boogielicious

[boogielicious]

5 minutes ago, dennyjones said:

I found editing the round on my PC to be much easier than my phone.   Great review @boogielicious

I haven’t tried that yet. 

[NM Golf]

18 hours ago, dennyjones said:

I found editing the round on my PC to be much easier than my phone.   Great review @boogielicious

Very true, it’s much easier on my Mac than my phone 

 

I also worry about scratching the face of the unit. Tagging 60 plus times a round could become a problem. I found a liquid screen protector made for watches and I’m going to try to put that on the face to protect it. Anyone else see this as potentially being an issue?

[billchao]

3 hours ago, NM Golf said:

I also worry about scratching the face of the unit. Tagging 60 plus times a round could become a problem. I found a liquid screen protector made for watches and I’m going to try to put that on the face to protect it. Anyone else see this as potentially being an issue?

I'm not concerned about it. The tags are likely softer than the screen, so unless you have sand embedded in the tag it's probably fine.

Though now that I think about it, I'd be more concerned with @Shindig's idea of leaving the unit in my pocket while playing. My pockets always end up with sand and dirt in them.

[Shindig]

On 5/19/2022 at 12:47 PM, billchao said:

Like the original Gorilla Glue, or just a glue made by Gorilla Glue (the company)? They make a bunch of different types of adhesives, many of which I absolutely would not have recommended for Game Golf tags.

Gorilla 100% Silicone Sealant (Clear).  I can take a picture, but my phone camera isn't in great shape (one of many reasons for a new phone soon).  

Don't worry, if this is not something I should have used for GG, I won't blame you.  I know the blame rests with me 🙂 

[iacas]

So my round today was rained out, but I have a tee time tomorrow.

[iacas]

22 hours ago, iacas said:

So my round today was rained out, but I have a tee time tomorrow.

Played nine holes.

I hit a 382-yard drive (and a 301 yard drive), but for some reason didn't get the 300-yard badge?

I found editing the round to be okay. I kinda wish it was more full-screen, because you can't zoom in quite as far as you can on GAME Golf. This made it tougher to put the flag in the proper place.

Also, it kept telling me I hadn't "viewed" the third hole, but what happened there was that I threw a ball down because Ryan told me the ball up ahead (my 382-yard tee shot) wasn't a golf ball, so I threw one down and hit it… then saw it was my ball, so I played it. I deleted the 4I and kept the PW of course. But my 301-yard tee shot was on #8, so that should have gotten me a badge, there, too.

It's mildly annoying to have to take the little thing out of the holder to "tag" the hole location every time. I think I might just learn which button is 1 and which is 2 and keep it on my belt. Also, I wish there was a stronger way to clip it than a magnet.

I wish the Pro LX rangefinder had a magnet. Even using the Frogger magnetic cart strap thing was a bit awkward because there are three buttons, so I had to put it way out toward the lens end. It worked fine.

I liked having the GPS yardages on the display. That's a nice upgrade to the GAME.

I didn't always feel the vibration. GAME beeped and while I'm glad this doesn't beep… It's a (small) pain to look at the screen to see if it tagged. My shirt hung over it a bit, too.

I only have nine holes in, so I'll hold off on sharing more of the stats.

[billchao]

I got my first round in. I haven't used Game Golf in so long, I got out of the habit of tagging. Missed a few shots on the course, though it was pretty easy to edit in on my computer.

Like @iacas, I also felt the editor was just okay. I didn't have an issue with the map size, but I found scrolling up and down a lot a bit tedious. I had to mess around with adding shots and penalties, though, so I had to spend more time editing off the map.

The penalty functions weren't very intuitive. They seem to add an additional "dead shot" (does not appear to track the distance for your stats) for counting purposes as well as a penalty stroke. The lost ball one makes sense, as it gives you a marker with an X on it so you can mark off where you hit the ball that was lost, then your next shot is from where you played your last stroke to where you play your next one. But the drop ball function seems to work the exact same way, which doesn't make sense. If I hit into a penalty area I'm likely not taking S&D, so in order to make it work score-wise, I ended up just deleting the original tracked shot. I don't know if I'm doing that correctly.

I didn't like tagging on my belt the way I used Game Golf. As Erik mentioned, the vibration is subtle and it doesn't beep. I often didn't know if it registered. Also the Game Golf unit was angled so you can tag the club hanging down at your side naturally. Tagging the Shot Scope requires bringing the club perpendicular to the ground. It's awkward and I almost hit a playing partner today while tagging a putt because he was walking past me and didn't expect me to bring the club up like that. Next time I'm going to try wearing the unit on my left like I do my Garmin and tagging by bringing the unit to the club. I might even stop using the Garmin if the GPS on the H4 is good enough. Didn't get a chance to compare today because I forgot my Garmin.

I didn't know there was a pin marker function. I'm going to have to try that next time.

So far I like the data it presents. It seems more detailed than Game Golf. I'll form a more complete opinion of it as I play more rounds.

[NM Golf]

The putter tag will not go on my putter because I use Super Stroke putter grips.  The putter tags with adhesive backs are $30 on the Shot Scope website which seems a bit pricey. Because of this, I decided to cut the screw part off the putter tag I got with my device and glue use it as a ball marker when I played today. It actually worked really well so I am thinking about glueing it to a bigger, heavier, harder to lose ball marker and then just tagging with it instead of my putter. 

On 5/22/2022 at 11:39 AM, billchao said:

I didn't like tagging on my belt the way I used Game Golf. As Erik mentioned, the vibration is subtle and it doesn't beep. I often didn't know if it registered.

I could feel the vibration in my hands as I touched the tag to the unit. I did not feel it vibrating on my belt at all.

[boogielicious]

6 hours ago, NM Golf said:

The putter tag will not go on my putter because I use Super Stroke putter grips.  The putter tags with adhesive backs are $30 on the Shot Scope website which seems a bit pricey. Because of this, I decided to cut the screw part off the putter tag I got with my device and glue use it as a ball marker when I played today. It actually worked really well so I am thinking about glueing it to a bigger, heavier, harder to lose ball marker and then just tagging with it instead of my putter. 

I could feel the vibration in my hands as I touched the tag to the unit. I did not feel it vibrating on my belt at all.

I use Super Stroke grips with the counter weight. I just glued it to the weight after clipping the screw. It never fell off with GG. When I removed the GG tag, the SS counter weight cap was in perfect shape. I did the same for H4.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, boogielicious said:

I use Super Stroke grips with the counter weight. I just glued it to the weight after clipping the screw. It never fell off with GG. When I removed the GG tag, the SS counter weight cap was in perfect shape. I did the same for H4.

I have a counter-weight and did a similar thing, though I left a bit of the screw nub because my counterweight is inside the end of the shaft, so there's still a little grip hole depth.

[NM Golf]

3 hours ago, boogielicious said:

I use Super Stroke grips with the counter weight. I just glued it to the weight after clipping the screw. It never fell off with GG. When I removed the GG tag, the SS counter weight cap was in perfect shape. I did the same for H4.

 

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I have a counter-weight and did a similar thing, though I left a bit of the screw nub because my counterweight is inside the end of the shaft, so there's still a little grip hole depth.

I have the same thing, a 50 gram counterweight. I considered glueing the tag to the putter, but I found having it as my marker was really easy. I just put my ball down, picked up the marker, and and tagged it. Not to mention I do have two putters I rotate into my bag from time to time, and it would be a pain to keep pulling off the tag. I also always use the same ball maker and divot tool every round so it will be easy to keep track of the tag.

[Darkfrog]

If you don't want to spend $30 for the adhesive backed putter tag, you can cut off the screw on the regular putter tag and use 3M auto emblem adhesive tape (around $10 for a roll) to stick it to the end of the grip.

[NM Golf]

10 minutes ago, Darkfrog said:

If you don't want to spend $30 for the adhesive backed putter tag, you can cut off the screw on the regular putter tag and use 3M auto emblem adhesive tape (around $10 for a roll) to stick it to the end of the grip.

Ummm okay...

10 hours ago, NM Golf said:

The putter tag will not go on my putter because I use Super Stroke putter grips.  The putter tags with adhesive backs are $30 on the Shot Scope website which seems a bit pricey. Because of this, I decided to cut the screw part off the putter tag I got with my device and glue it...

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by NM Golf