Voice Caddie SC200 Portable Launch Monitor Review

Jman

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UPDATE!!!

THE HOMEPAGE REVIEW ON THE SC200 CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://www.thehackersparadise.com/voice-caddie-sc200-portable-launch-monitor-review/

In for review to THP is one on a device which has been chattered about for some time, the Voice Caddie SC200 Portable Launch Monitor. Some much requested changes/additions such as the ability to specify club loft, having all information displayed on one screen, and also a temp/barometric-pressure sensor in order to increase the accuracy of readouts based on conditions have been made to the device since the release of its predecessor the SC100 which THP also reviewed (Homepage Review found Here: http://www.thehackersparadise.com/voice-caddie-swing-caddie-sc100-review/).

Testing, as always, will be done in detail an updates will be found in this thread as work is done to complete the formal homepage review. Comparisons to a full launch monitor as well as the SC100 will be tracked and discussed.

Information from Voice Caddie on the SC200:

Barometric Pressure Calibration – Swing Caddie uses a built in barometric pressure sensor to automatically calibrate itself to give you the most accurate readings possible.

Voice Distance Output – The SC200’s new Voice Distance Output feature automatically tells you your distances after each shot allowing you to reset quicker between shots.

Practice Mode – Practice Mode displays your shot distance, swing speed, ball speed, and smash factor, as well as the time played and total shot count. Select your club, set your Swing Caddie behind your ball, and you are ready to play. Swing Caddie will automatically register your shot and display the information until your next shot.

Target Mode – Target Mode lets you set a target distance to test your consistency. Use the buttons of the remote to increase or decrease your target distance. Once your distance and club are set, you are ready to go. One round in Target Mode is 10 shots. After each swing, Swing Caddie will display your shot distance, swing speed, ball speed, smash factor, and a score out of 10 to show you how close you were to your goal.

Approach Mode – Approach Mode sets random target distances to challenge your accuracy. Instead of practicing one distance over and over, let Swing Caddie give you random distances. Swing Caddie will display your first random distance and wait for your shot. After each shot, Swing Caddie will display your shot distance, swing speed, ball speed, smash factor, and a score out of 10. After a few seconds, it will switch the display to your next random target distance.

Statistics – Swing Caddie stores your stats for each club. You can review your average distance, speed and smash factor for the day, as well as your overall stats for the last 100 shots.

Ball Speed and Smash Factor – Swing Caddie uses the club head (swing) speed and the ball speed to calculate your smash factor. This measurement will help you build consistency in your swing.

Loft Angle Adjustment - Swing Caddie allows you to adjust the loft angle for each club to help you dial in the most accurate readings possible.

Remote Control – Swing Caddie’s remote control is small and light enough to keep in your pocket and allows you to adjust your settings without having to take a step.

Specifications:
  • Weight – 207g
  • Sensor – Doppler Radar
  • Battery Life – Up to 20 hours
  • Accuracy - +/- 3% (ball speed), +/- 5% (carry distance)
  • Range – 30 to 320 yards

In-Hand Images:
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Comparison to SC100:
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Nice review James. Looking to see how the comparisons to the SC100 are
 
Remote is significantly larger. I'm liking the subtle differences on the display
 
Ponder engaged! Nice write up JMan i am definitely in the market for this one
 
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Thanks all, going to get it out and about for some getting to know you time tomorrow. Really curious to see if it has truly improved on what was a damn solid unit.
 
Can't wait to hear more and having used the sc100 will be looking to see how this compares and how the changes are.
 
Looking forward to your review JMan, did I miss the price point in your post? Or is it not known yet?


Sent from the magic know everything box in my pocket
 
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Looking forward to your review JMan, did I miss the price point in your post? Or is it not known yet?


Sent from the magic know everything box in my pocket

Forgot to add it in, the SC200 is at $349.99.
 
Great info and comparisons Jman. Can't wait to hear how this performs for you.
 
Forgot to add it in, the SC200 is at $349.99.

Thanks! That's a solid price point for a package like that.
 
Great review James
 
Looking forward to putting the work in on this one to update the forum here as well as writing the formal homepage review on it.
 
Looking forward to hearing more about the SC200.

The SC100 was a bit hit & miss for me, working great some days, not so much others. Since getting rid of it I definitely wish I still had one though.
 
Also looking forward to your thoughts on this one. My clusterswing didn't read well on the last one.
 
Little bump for those that missed the in-hand pics, will be getting out this afternoon.
 
Little bump for those that missed the in-hand pics, will be getting out this afternoon.

Will be interesting to hear if you have the same experience as I did, I posted a small mini-review (or well, more opinions from the first session) in another thread, is it ok if I repost it here to compare your experience with mine?
 
Will be interesting to hear if you have the same experience as I did, I posted a small mini-review (or well, more opinions from the first session) in another thread, is it ok if I repost it here to compare your experience with mine?

That is always welcome here on THP, feel free to use this thread!

It was interesting to read as much of what you talked about I never saw pop up with the SC100, so I'm curious to see what comes of things here when I get the SC200 out and about. One of the strongest features of the SC100 was the short game distance challenge, I spent HOURS on that and didn't see any issues from the 30 yard shots all the way into the 100 range. Something I will be keeping a keen eye on for sure.
 
That is always welcome here on THP, feel free to use this thread!

It was interesting to read as much of what you talked about I never saw pop up with the SC100, so I'm curious to see what comes of things here when I get the SC200 out and about. One of the strongest features of the SC100 was the short game distance challenge, I spent HOURS on that and didn't see any issues from the 30 yard shots all the way into the 100 range. Something I will be keeping a keen eye on for sure.

Cool, then I will do that. And I am also very curious to see what you results for that are, as the approach mode was one of the reasons we bought it. If we are doing something wrong (not sure how much you can do wrong though) it would be great to know!

From other thread:
Me and a friend that usually go to the range and play together traded in our old iron sets for one of those. We only used it a little so far, but the first impressions are as follows:

It is accurate on reading distances on 9i-5i and our hybrids (around 20*). They end up a little short on the monitor compared to on the course, but this is with range balls, which to be fair should have been replaced a long time ago, so I'd say that is to be expected, they simply travel less distance than proper balls, so the readings here are good.

For drivers, the reading is off for both of us on the range. However, the distance it gives does translate pretty well to the distance we get with the driver on course, with proper balls, so it could be something with the range balls there too.

Now to the actual problem. It has an approach mode, which gives you a distance between 40 and 100 metres, that you are supposed to hit. However, we find it extremely hard to get it to register those kind of shots. I dont know if it is because the ball goes straight up and disappears too fast (it says you need 6 metres in front of you if you hit in to a net) but when we do full shots they wont register on the PW and lower (PW works sometimes). If we do half swings instead, to chip the ball, then it seems its too slow instead, and doesnt pick those up either, rendering the approach mode more or less useless for us. I dont think this would be the case for a slower swinger, or someone with a lower ball flight, but I think it is worth mentioning.

Finally, as can be expected ofc, since it does not check spin, direction, etc, if you mishit, the reading will be all wrong. A horrible slice will still read as decent distance, since what I think it does is check clubhead speed, ballspeed and then calculate smash factor and distance from that. Also, the smash factor value is...I'd say dodgy at best.

So to summarize, I think it is a good buy to dial in the iron distances etc, and maybe driver/fairway woods too if you hit into a net with proper balls (can't say for sure though) but other than that, it is mostly a toy that at best makes you focus a little better at the range. Keep in mind though I only used it for 1 range session, so those are just first impressions.
 
Will have some thoughts/data this weekend on this one, I have gotten it out a couple of times so far and the quick and dirty is that it works just as well as the SC100 for me. I've had no issues with it tracking shots, and the short-game game is just as addictive and effective as it was on the SC100.

Not going to be perfect, but you also aren't looking at a 10,000 dollar launch monitor either.
 
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallright. I know there has been a lack of updates in here, and a lot of that was due to weather causing my ranges to close constantly, and then a week of vacation. That said, I have been in deep data collection mode at every opportunity with this one and am just about to put it all down on paper for the formal homepage review. That said though, I do want to pop in here and address a few things before that.

1) Coming into this, my fear was that Voice Caddie was going to change more than they needed to. What I mean by that is I still (and will forever) stand by the SC100 being an incredible little golf practice tool. Is it without its quirks? Hell no, but IMO that is to be expected as remember, this is not a 10,000 or 20,000 dollar flightscope/trackman/etc, its a 350 dollar doppler based unit intent on helping golfers better understand their games and also giving a way to practice with a purpose. Voice Caddie thankfully stayed true to what worked with the SC100 and simply tweaked it to improve, its an evolution rather than a revolution and that is a damn good thing.

2) Compared to the SC100 the new SC200 read very similarly, in terms of carry, shots were within 1-2 yards each swing (thin shots can give more variance on how its read, but that is a bad miss and should be understood that a unit like this is going to skew a bit there IMO), ball speeds and swing speeds have been within 2 mph of eachother and the smash has been very very close as well. I'll get to the LM comparison here in the next bullet point but essentially the SC200 really IS more accurate, the added barometric pressure sensor and ability to enter the correct club loft (instead of the pre-set ones with the SC100) aid in this in a big way, IMO compensating for heat and pressure is HUGE.

3) Head to head with my full launch monitor which I use for THP testing, the SC200 came through in a very positive comparison. The LM did read club/swing speeds a bit lower consistently and as such the smash is also lower than the SC200 but that isnt surprising given the correlation of SS and Smash, the biggest thing here is that the numbers are still consistently close. Carry distance and ball speeds on well to decently struck shots though were actually scary close time and again with my LM, within 1 or less (hard to be pinpoint as the SC200 rounds the #'s b/c of screen space). The biggest difference here though is how the two read the bigger misses, the LM is gave me much more realistic miss numbers thanks to reading spin numbers, but as was my point when I reviewed the SC100, it really shouldn't be hard for someone to look and see if the readout distance wise on a miss is accurate or not. Overall though, I'm again surprised with how solidly the SC100 and now SC200 perform next to a "high end" unit.

4) I've not had any issues with missed readings. I have had two over the buckets and buckets I have hit and that was because I didn't realize I had set up outside of the width cap (6" to the left or right of the unit). I've also had a lot of others hit on the SC100 and SC200 and missreads just aren't there, I do think many set up way too close to the unit because of its size and thinking that there is no way it can read the swing from 3 (an a third or whatever) feet to 5 feet. Add to that, if its unlevel from the lie being hit off of (the unit is above the ball) then yeah it can have some issues, but IMO following the setup guidelines takes care of all of that.

5) The short game challenge/target mode is just as freaking awesome as it was with the SC100. From 25 yards and out I have had a lot of fun with it, again with no reading issues.

6) The new remote is great, still really small/compact, but now you can do everything (modes, read-outs, loft adjustments, voice, etc) right there.

7) Voice mode works, actually is pretty freaking loud on its highest. I'm not big on it because I don't want to distract others on the range, but I can see how some will like it even though it just takes a glance at the unit to see what is what. I will say though, in target mode it adds a little something when competing with someone to hear the number read out, so thats cool.

8) I'm personally not a fan of the dark blue color, sort of a nitpick, yeah, but being that I'm on the range in 100 degree temps through the summer months the darker colors just heat it up more. I've had no issues there with it effecting read outs, but its something I still think about.

9) Battery life is great, I'm still on full battery levels even with all I have used it.

10) Putting all the info (or most since you can switch from carry to total, though total is a complete estimation) on one screen is so great. Switching the data with the SC100 was a bit of a bear, particularly if you didnt want to have the remote right there all the time or walk back to the unit after each swing. Now, its all there, such an easy change, but the perfect example of what I said earlier, evolution not revolution.

I'm going to get out again tomorrow for a little more work to tidy up some thoughts, but as always if there are any questions please post up and ask, its what we staff writers are here for (and we really do love and appreciate the feedback/conversation).
 
Excellent writeup Jman! I'm looking forward to your homepage review. I hadn't really thought about the case color until you mentioned it here but I have noticed my SC200 sometimes felt a warmer than my SC100 (mine was white) after sessions on sunny days. Good catch.
 
I love mine also. Just one thing though- do you find the power slide button engagement less than positive? On mine when I slide it up to power it on, it seems to drop down slightly, then if I bump it slightly it shuts it off.


Thanks.
 
I love mine also. Just one thing though- do you find the power slide button engagement less than positive? On mine when I slide it up to power it on, it seems to drop down slightly, then if I bump it slightly it shuts it off.


Thanks.

Not that I have seen, pretty solid click/lock from off to on and on to off, sounds like that might be something worth reaching out to the company about though as that would be pretty annoying.
 
Nice writeup james, sounds like a nifty little guy for a reasonable price thats going to get you pretty darn freaking close to the crazy big $$$ ones
 
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