Slowly but steadily, Garmin has been updating its golf-specific Approach watches every year, taking them from a simple method of finding your way around a course to serving as a personal assistant while you’re away from work. Now, the new S6 can even help you improve your swing and your handicap.
Its most obvious improvement is a new full colour touchscreen providing detailed maps of over 30,000 courses including your current location, thanks to built-in GPS hardware, and even direction tips on which way you should be facing when taking a shot to hit the green.
So the Approach S6 will let you know just how close your terrible shots are to sand traps and water hazards, but it goes one step further and helps you improve your game so your shots don’t actually end up so far off the fairway. Integrated motion sensors and accelerometers measure the motion of your golf swing, including the speed of your club and the power with which you strike the ball. And it will even play audible tones designed to help you improve the timing of your swing.
The $US400 Approach S6 will be available later this year, and on a full charge you can expect to get about ten hours of battery life using all of its tracking and GPS functionality. When just using it as a watch though, Garmin claims it should run for about 14 weeks, which is a bit more reasonable. [Garmin via Wired]