Friday, August 27, 2010

Deciding Which Golf GPS Units Available Today Are Best

By Max Pigford

It was only a matter of time until golf GPS units hit the courses of the United States and other parts of the world. After all, golfers love gadgets, tend to be fanatical, are always looking for an edge, spend a lot of time replaying the game in the clubhouse, and receive a lot of golf-related gifts.

All the units and down loadable programs provide access to tens of thousands of courses in the US. It is simple to make an online visit to the manufacturers site to ensure that your favorite courses are in a unit's database before choosing it. Some units also tell you how far you are from a listed course, which can be useful information if you are thinking about visiting.

The screen display of many devices gives the par for each hole, score is kept and scorecards can be saved, and touch screens are now common. There are mounts to attach a handeld GPS to the golf cart, if the player prefers not to carry it. Screens are in color, with large characters to make reading distances and the menu items easy, and brightness is one of the competitive features.

A feature that is found on all units is a list of golf courses in the United States, stored in the unit and able to be expanded or updated online using a USB connection. It is easy to check online to make sure a device you are interested in lists your local courses and the ones you regularly play on vacation. Some units will tell you how far listed courses are from your current location, which would be helpful when deciding whether to accept invitations from golfing buddies.

Advantages of using a guidance program while playing golf include previewing the course, measuring the fairways and plotting the hazards. You can also select the perfect club after getting precise distances, keep score, and save both scorecard and length of shot information. Course maps reveal details of the landscape that are not always visible from where you stand, such as the direction a stream turns or the shape of a bunker.

Going over the day hole by hole over a drink later in the Clubhouse is easy with all the data saved in your golf guidance device, as well as backing up a story of either a spell in the rough or a hole-in-one. You can also rethink club choice or check on the par for each hole when you use the distance measurements, the past result data, or the course statistics stored in your GPS.

Golf GPS units have many features such as touch screens, ease of accessing menus and tools, fees, or free add-ons that you will want to check out as you compare the different models and types on the market.

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