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Garmin Approach R10 Launch Monitor

The Indoor Golf Shop
Been really interested in one of these! May sell the Rapsodo to put towards this soon. The simulator feature would be huge in the winter for me with how much I spend on sim time
 
I ordered on 7/7 so hopefully I'll see it in the next week or so. I'll have it side by side with my original Mevo.
 
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There it is, my precious 😁
Quick unboxing. However, the wife demands gardening work before playtime. So bear with me, I try to set up the hitting net in the backyard this afternoon to report on initial impressions. Good side of this approach: the R10 came nearly discharged (16%) which is why I immediately plugged it in for charging.
 
Unfortunately, gardening took way longer than expected. There was only time to do a few chip shots. However, getting an initial feeling was possible for me.
What I noticed really quick:
- the R10 is highly sensitive to correct alignment as a few other reviewers already mentioned. Using an alignment stick or longer shafted club to provide better visual for your own alignment definitely helps.
- registering swings and providing data is really quick. There is nearly no delay. Really impressive.
I cannot report on accuracy of the data (no GCQuad or Trackman I could geht ahold of in the next days) but there will be appropriate tests available quite soon I expect.

With the device a coupon for 5 free courses on E6 Connect is available. Below you‘ll see the included courses. I think, for starters that could provide some fun hours.
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Spoke to an expert in the field that has been testing this device against a few others and they said for outside on the range it works decently well, with some glitches they hope Garmin sorts out.

Indoors, with simulator work, it struggles (like a number of radar do) with accuracy but outdoors it was “okay”. The biggest beef is alignment off by an inch and everything is way off. These need to be sorted out because outside of using alignment stick on every shot, it’s tough to even use.
 
JB said:
Spoke to an expert in the field that has been testing this device against a few others and they said for outside on the range it works decently well, with some glitches they hope Garmin sorts out.

Indoors, with simulator work, it struggles (like a number of radar do) with accuracy but outdoors it was “okay”. The biggest beef is alignment off by an inch and everything is way off. These need to be sorted out because outside of using alignment stick on every shot, it’s tough to even use.
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Good information - as someone that is really looking at a device like this to mostly use indoors this type of alignment issue would be something I would not want to fight with all the time. That just gives something else you got to focus on.
 
Luchnia said:
Good information - as someone that is really looking at a device like this to mostly use indoors this type of alignment issue would be something I would not want to fight with all the time. That just gives something else you got to focus on.
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I think, alignment could be ensured quite well indoors. It’s more of a technical issue that radar based systems need to measure quite some travel distance of the ball to calculate all parameters. Indoors that space is often limited and there might be interferences as well having an influence on the received signals of the radar. Thats why I‘d see a definitive advantage of optical systems for that user scenario.
 
Earl553 said:
I think, alignment could be ensured quite well indoors. It’s more of a technical issue that radar based systems need to measure quite some travel distance of the ball to calculate all parameters. Indoors that space is often limited and there might be interferences as well having an influence on the received signals of the radar. Thats why I‘d see a definitive advantage of optical systems for that user scenario.
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I am anticipating more testing from you guys! No doubt it is a great price bracket for budget minded retired golfers like me.
 
JB said:
Indoors, with simulator work, it struggles (like a number of radar do) with accuracy but outdoors it was “okay”. The biggest beef is alignment off by an inch and everything is way off. These need to be sorted out because outside of using alignment stick on every shot, it’s tough to even use.
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That was why I sent back my MEVO after a couple weeks. Just not practical to be accurate enough in setup out on the course or driving range and fairly small setup issues caused ridiculously bad launch angle numbers.
 
I hope it works well. Have mine on pre-order and would like something to use during the winter up here
 
Had my first range session yesterday.
here are a few more observations:
- alignment was as per my feeling not as hard to get right (or at least „ok'ish“) as expected from my session hitting into my net.
- I hit 52 shots, 51 got registered, also duffed and skulled ones.
- on 3 shots the measured shot shape was apparently wrong. The Garmin showed a slight left curve while the ball was going slightly to the right (again, not an alignment issue)
- Most shots had quite solid measurements from what I observed / felt (no TM or GCQuad to validate - please bear with me)
- some shots had really weird Club path and face data (>20 degrees while I‘d expect at most 10 if not even less on that swings)

all in all I was quite satisfied. Have to tinker around with it quite a bit more. But I can definitely see it as a worthwhile not overly pricey Training tool.
 
I just received my R10 a couple days ago, quickly tried indoors that day but spent most of the time trying to find enough room to set everything up. Needing 8+ feet beyond where your hitting is understandable but challenging.

Took it to the range instead yesterday to do some outdoor testing, so here are some of my early impressions:

Device itself:
  • Like the pouch it came with, and really like the included tripod/phone mount. The phone mount is a great touch, and like that it seems intended for clipping onto a golf bag.
  • Wish they had included a longer charging cable - it's like 1.5 ft. long. Not a big deal though.
  • Agree with everyone else saying that alignment is not particularly easy, and can really mess with the readings. Hopefully they can figure out a way to make it less sensitive to this. Or maybe include an "Alignment shot mode" - hit a shot, and adjust the flight path left/right in the app until it matches what you just saw. Now you've corrected for the device alignment.
  • It kept going into a sleep mode (I think) where the light was flashing white, which required me to go tap the power button again. As soon as I tapped the power button it would wake right back up and start flashing green (good to go, recognizes ball).
  • As others have mentioned, very quick to recognize a ball and also show readouts in the app - the shot tracer was showing up nearly in real-time while the ball was still in the air. Very cool.
Measurements:
  • Distances felt/looked very accurate - Probably the best readings I was getting from the device.
  • Spin seemed okay for the most part, but it's hard to tell with range balls. At one point I was hitting a lob wedge and getting <2k spin figures, which I thought was an issue, but maybe that's just range balls.
  • Flight path was really good below 7 iron, but started having some issues with the long irons and above. There were a few times that the ball started on the correct path, but flew with the opposite spin (ex: pull draw, instead of pull fade).
  • Club/face paths do NOT seem accurate at all. In fact, it basically scared the crap out of me, as the readings were >10 degrees pretty much constantly (as others before have mentioned) - I noticed this when I first tested indoors, and spent the night thinking I've been coming over the top my whole life. Annoyingly I spent the first 20 mins of my range session yesterday thinking I had to adjust my swing to fix this issue, before it started dawning on me that it may just be an issue with the device. It's especially strange since the flight paths were good, but the club paths were not. Hopefully this can be fixed with a software update.
  • Angle of Attack readings seemed correct, but I don't really have anything to base it on. Nothing stood out as being problematic here, but wouldn't be surprised considering the club path issues.
  • Launch angle seemed good as well, but admittedly wasn't paying super close attention to this stat.
I'll continue to test and provide feedback here. If anybody has any questions, or would like me to test a particular scenario, please let me know.
 
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What‘s really disappointing as of now is a missing export functionality to review your sessions in a more accessible way, e.g., through Excel. While Garmin Connect won‘t let you access the session data in any way (not via API and also not through any of the web portals), I‘ve found out that you can request all data stored by Garmin (thank you, GDPR, for once!), which also includes JSON files containing all data. I‘ve quickly scripted a python converter to extract a handy csv file. Makes an analyst‘s life so much easier! :D

update: quick observation - in the data sets there are few additional data points, as e.g., backswing time and downswing time and their quotient „Swing Tempo“.
 
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hmmm, i might need to borrow that script when I actually get a chance to use the R10. I started remodeling the inside of garage/pool cabana to clean it up a bit and need to finish that prior to having folks over on Saturday.

Looking forward to using the R10. Swing tempo is also something I want to work on as I tend to be fast
 
Sure! I‘ll upload it somewhen over the next days to Github when I‘ve made it a bit more robust. Was just quick and dirty 5 minutes data conversion hacking. Need to merge a few more files (club types) into the exporter flow and then I‘ll share it with you.
 
Earl553 said:
Sure! I‘ll upload it somewhen over the next days to Github when I‘ve made it a bit more robust. Was just quick and dirty 5 minutes data conversion hacking. Need to merge a few more files (club types) into the exporter flow and then I‘ll share it with you.
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Thanks Earl, while I am a UNIX/network guy I do not know much programming besides shell scripting and some perl
 
rlefig said:
Thanks Earl, while I am a UNIX/network guy I do not know much programming besides shell scripting and some perl
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Don’t worry. Python is quite accessible, even more for braces galore lovers like Perl coders :D ;-)
I already cleaned the script a bit and merged Club definitions into the data set. Will write a short manual, upload everything to Github and share it with you guys.
 
I will be testing it out on the range for the first time today. Will let you all know. Hitting into my garage net the other distances seemed short on all clubs. That was running 3.40. I was also a bit hungover and tired from the lobsta bake the day before.
 
running software 3.60 the R10 seemed to do fine on the range.My readings were all pretty good. I hit driver, 9 iron, 7 iron, GW and SW. There were a couple of SW shots that went 130 and that was not reality more around 100-110. There were also a couple that were way off line. But maybe 5-8 shots out of whack from 100
 
Had a fitting on a TrackMan yesterday. We set up the R10 besides it to have some little comparison. Carry, Swing- and Ballspeed, Launch were very very similar. After some adjustment Club and Face were also solid as was the spin axis. However, even though AoA should also be measured, that figures were off most of the time (more than 3-5 degrees) making them unusable for me. We‘ll see whether Garmin will improve here. Yet, the rest impressed my pro so much that he‘ll order a few for his trainings and trainees to make it more data based besides some Trackman sessions. All in all the session yesterday really strengthened my trust into this little device (for my personal training and use cases!).
 
The last days were a bit stressy and unforeseen and unfortunate events took place. However, I finally got to upload the python converter script to a Github space. You can find it here: Garmin R10 Simulation Data Converter
I hope that some people might find it helpful until Garmin publishes a better way to work with our data.
 
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