Play real-life golf courses from your garden with Garmin’s Approach G80

Playing golf can be a lonely pastime. When you’re hacking your way out of the rough for the eighth time in the space of one hole and everyone else is ready to tee off from the next one it’s easy to feel like the whole world is against you. But with Garmin’s Approach G80 (US$500) by your side you won’t even need companions to play with anymore. In fact, you won’t even need a real course. While its GPS and 3.5in colour touchscreen can be used to work out the distance to the pin, its built-in radar capabilities mean you can place it next to your ball on the driving range and it’ll calculate various metrics including estimated distance, club head speed, ball speed and something called smash factor, which probably isn’t as sexist as it sounds. All this can then be used to play virtual rounds on over 41,000 pre-loaded courses around the world, with online weekly leaderboards allowing you to compete against other G80 owners. Who’s lonely now, eh?

Tom Wiggins Contributor

About

Stuff's other Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.

Areas of expertise

Gaming (OK, mainly just FIFA), weird Alexa skills, USB sticks