GolfBuddy WT4 Golf Watch Review

GolfBuddy WT-4 Golf GPS Watch

On Amazon: GolfBuddy GB9-WT4 Golf GPS Watch

Grade: A
Teachers’ Comments: The lightest GPS watch I’ve tested. Very handy.

GolfBuddy shipped me one of their WT-4 Golf GPS watches for testing just as the snow started to fall in Michigan, so I was worried that I wouldn’t have a chance to test it until the spring. Fortunately, the white stuff melted in a brief thaw and my local course reopened, so I braved thirty degree temperatures the day before Thanksgiving to give it a whirl. That’s the kind of dedication, dear readers, that you get from The Original Golfblogger.

Of the several golf gps watches I’ve tried, the GolfBuddy WT-4 is by far the comfortable. It is in fact not much bigger than my Pebble Smartwatch. That’s significant, because size and weight were my major concerns with the two earlier units I’ve tested. I got used to the feel of the larger units, but was not sure that everyone would feel the same.
The GolfBuddy WT-4 is slim and light enough to alleviate those concerns.

GolfBuddy has packed a lot of features into the unit. It’s got the usual yardage to the center of the green, but also incorporates measurements to the front and back of greens.

A push of a button brings up a screen that shows distances to course features such as dogleg corners, water, fairway bunkers and treelines.

As with many golf gps units, the GolfBuddy WT-4 measures the distances of your shots. I find this feature to be nearly as useful as the distance to green measurements. Since I started using GPS units on the course and accurately measuring my club distances, I’ve become a much smarter player. Not only do I have baselines, but I’m also able to tell—within a couple of holes—whether I’m hitting the ball further or shorter than usual, and make appropriate club adjustments. On my pre-Thanksgiving round, after a couple of holes, the GolfBuddy WT-4 had given me enough information to prompt me to add another club for the remainder of the round. That worked out perfectly.

Given the weather and time constraints, I tested the GolfBuddy golf gps watch on just one course. I found that its numbers very closely aligned to the two other GPS units I carried that day for comparison. The GolfBuddy very smoothly transitioned between holes and quickly updated information as I walked.

According to the product literature, the watch is pre-loaded with information for some 37,000 worldwide courses. After switching the GolfBuddy WT-4 to golf mode, the watch found the GPS satellites and my course very quickly.

There are no annual fees for the watch, and it can be updated via your computer.

A really nice feature—which I don’t have on my handheld GPS units—is a walking fitness mode. While in golf play mode, it automatically tracks the number of miles you’ve walked as well as elapsed time and walking pace. As a dedicated walking golfer, I appreciate this. The feature also can be used off the course as a walking/running tracker.

With the caveat that my testing has been very limited, I think that the GolfBuddy WT-4 is the best golf gps watch I’ve yet tried.

Recommended.

The GolfBuddy WT4 Golf Watch Review was first published November 27, 2014