Let me say I’m not expecting my Rapsodo launch monitor to be as good but hoped the differences would be consistent, they were not even close. Why, well out of 100 balls at the driving range 10 were identical 30 within 2-3 and the balance all over the place. The guys at the range said wind was the problem, Top tracer allows for it and Rapsodo can’t. My question is if that’s true how can the differences between so far apart, Rapsodo was 6-7 metres behind and 11-12 metres longer. If the Rapsodo differences were always less than Top Tracer I could accept and understand that but to also be longer then no, otherwise my Rapsodo is faulty except it’s very close to my friends SC300i or it was a bad day. Have you had much involvement with the cheaper launch monitors?
I have taken the small launch monitors and placed them along with the GC Quad and Foresight monitors. The small Doppler monitors do an excellent job of ball speed. It is never more than 1 or 2 mph off on ball speed but usually dead on.
Swing speed it over estimates by 3 mph, very rarely exact.
Carry distance is anyone’s guess what it will say verses the more accurate monitors. My guess at accuracy is this:
– The small launch monitors do not know spin numbers.
– The small launch monitors do not know path or trajectory.
– The small monitors know ball speed and maybe swing speed and then guess at the rest.
If you spin your driver at 3,500 and then spin it at 1,900 or hit it at 11 degrees verses 14 degrees, or a combination of both, the small monitor has no idea you did this. The expensive monitor does and gives you the result.
In short, my experience is buy the small launch monitor for ball speed and look at all the other data for amusement purposes. They really can’t do much more than true ball speed no matter what they say they measure.
Thanks for your input very much appreciated, I’d have to agree with the ball speed because I’ve noticed that the same ball speed has differences in distance and club head speed. Have you used a shot scope GPS watch and what’s your opinion on its feedback? Cheers Colin
As with all golf stuff, I find a reason to buy it so yes I have a shot scope GPS watch. It was interesting but seemed to add too much overhead to my playing. Getting the sensor to tag so it knew which club and then downloading the game afterwards told me nothing I didn’t already know. As for distances, it never seemed to know what I wanted to know. A 147 pin was 143 at times. I really need to know front of the green and I never grew to trust it. Even today, my golf partners with GPS watches look to me to verify.
As for distance, I have an old Leupold range finder, so old slope technology wasn’t invented yet. It hits the flag fast and accurate. In my opinion and experience Leupold is as good as it gets. The pin sheet tells me how much room in front or back I have. This works best and where I landed for technology.
We have an indoor facility in town that has the Trackman and Foresight monitors I use to get my clean carry distances from. I can use my own golf balls instead of range balls. That is where my technology knowledge comes from and where I test different club combinations in my bag. On the course, I use just the range finder and keep it simple. At the driving range I use a small launch monitor to track if my ball speed is getting better.
I wish I could find a reason to buy more stuff but that is all I have found useful.
Hmmmm yesterday I had 123 miles per hour club head speed, has this 123 mph answered my question??