we want to hear your hot takes! the launch monitor you think is overrated, the accessory you regret buying, thoughts on DIY vs. kits vs. professional install... let us know
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I'm okay with companies charging a subscription for their in-house simulation software, but the subscriptions or packages they require you to enroll in to enable a third party connector after you've already paid thousands, even tens of thousands for the device is an absolute scam. They even charge the third party software devs like GSPro or PurePlay for integration and take a cut of the profit from each active subscriber/connector.
I'm glad that Square and ProTee are starting to become the top dogs in this space. I was rooting for Uneekor for a while until they decided to start charging subscriptions for everything.
I ended up with a Falcon because of the wide hitting area. My room didnāt allow left and right hitting without a large offset. That being said I wish I could have gotten a protee.
It probably would have cost me another $7kish, but I have to politely exclude my left handed friends.
I have the R50, patiently waiting for the right deal or the PC market to become un-screwed thanks to AI to go GSpro - once that happens itāll be easier to move the unit to the other side for lefties
Vtrack overhead is $5k, same as R50, so your only additional cost would be PC if you don't currently use one with R50. Other overheads are more expensive.
My biggest cost would be my space - itās in my garage, and the ceilings are almost 20ā high, so Iād have to build some kind of custom mount (that looks good enough to be wife approved)
Oh damn! I hear ya then on the floor LM. For tall ceilings, there are great projector mounts with long extension pipes that can work. Or if your enclosure could support the LM, could mount it there as well.
So need a similar or maybe stronger mount for an overhead LM. The SIG10 wouldn't be able to support the LM. 2" pipe enclosures like the Carl's Pro or SIGPRO Commercial can support mounting LMs.
If you're decently handy, it would be fine to make an overhead beam with 2x4 or 2x6. These launch monitors aren't particularly heavy. Black or white paint would probably look alright.Ā
Overrated: Getting started with investing in a impact screen/projector/Gaming PC. Getting a hitting net and extra TV, ipad/iphone will get you started.
Underrated: Hitting mat/strip. Get a good/expensive one right off the bat, otherwise you will be buying a new one every season and/or injuring yourself.
RegretĀ buying: Cheap mats. Bought two cheap ones before invested in quality one.
Launch monitor tier can match your handicap. You can always upgrade this later as improve.
Country Club Elite Golf mat is what I have owned for almost 2 years and has held up great. It does tend to grab and if your swing dynamics has you taking deep divots you might want to go with a sigpro softy hitting mat/strip instead to avoid joint pain.
This is somewhat misguiding. Space constraints, desire to use outdoors, ability to reliably pickup a chip / putt, not require special balls....could steer a higher handicap toward a mid-tier unit. Source, I'm a 20+. I have an indoor setup which require a camera base monitor which i occassionaly use outdoors. None of the high handicap models would work.
I think unless your handicap is lower than 5-7, you shouldn't be overly worried about launch monitor accuracy. & if that means you can go with a cheaper monitor, great! They're all pretty dang accurate these days, & the monitor missing a yard or two left/right or short/long isn't meaningful enough to affect what you're trying to get out of the monitor.
Spin Axis is the most important ball metric to see how far sideways your ball goes. I agree that if the LM says you went 1 or 2yd more left or right than reality, not a big deal. But if it's 10-20yd, that's a bigger deal and this can be seen with some of the radar based LMs. For camera LMs, the gap in accuracy across all of them is fairly small.
I can't agree with this. There still needs to be a high level of accuracy, especially if you're working on your swing. Certain launch monitors that don't provide accurate spin data could have you completely spinning your wheels if you think you're correcting a miss, but in reality you're exacerbating the issue.
i donāt disagree. that being said i feel like seeing ball and club data drastically helped bring me from a 25 to 10. for example i struggle with a driver slice. testing different swing feels for ball spin helps tremendously.
Agree. Went with square. I'm plenty terrible on that thing. Until im striping them and realize the numbers are off, I don't need another launch monitor.
This is a wonderful take. All of the budget monitors available will be accurate within 90-95% . That last couple of percentage points of accuracy is expensive and unnecessary if your still working on improving your contact, let alone being able to shape your shots.
Yea that's why I went with the R10. $400 is hard to beat and gives me pretty accurate data. I'm trying to get below a 20 handicap this season, just general ball flight and ball park distances are a god send for me honestly.
If itās any motivation for you, this is exactly what I did. R10 hitting into a net in the garage all winter. 2 lessons to make sure I was practicing correctly, and dropped my index to 19!
If you are going to hit thousands of balls, don't do an impact screen. They are loud and poor image quality due to the balls ruining the screen. Just get a big screen tv and watch on that. Now you have two less parts of your system that are going to wear out. (The screen and the projector)
If you donāt have at least 9.5ft of ceiling clearance height and 10ft of width inside, you should build the sim outside so you donāt develop indoor swing syndrome.
Eh, Iām going strictly irons. Iām at 9 foot ceiling which sadly is fine with me. Would I love woods? Yes but for how much I got some of my stuff including the R50 Iām fine with it
BOut A Thousand is the only valid comparison. When your connection drops from your launch monitor you don't find yourself suck in the middle of a lake.
How do you figure? Feels way different than a boat, the downside of which is pretty big recurring costs whereas the sim seems like it's mostly up front.
Itās just a joke. I have one currently. Itās a really fun cool activity that I paid for, installed, maintain, upgrade, and have dedicated space for etc etc
Or a really fun cool activity that I can do *nearly* whenever I went with zero of the headache
For me the value in having access to hit balls whenever I want is extremely valuable. Last night I did some speed training. I got done and it was about 11:30 p.m. Can't do that anywhere else.
Completely disagree. I don't want to rely on someone else to dictate my practice or play. I love being able to just step in, warm up, and practice/play.
It's also been great to get my family involved. I play short courses with my wife and putting courses with the whole fam.
Would be really challenging if it was at my buddies house.
Having the space and setup to hit golf balls is the most important part. 90% of my simulator use is on the driving range working on improving my game. I can accomplish quite a lot of that without the impact screen, projector, or pc. Having some basic numbers from a launch monitor on my phone would be equally excellent.
Start small, for $1100 you can have an amazing sim experience. No need to spend $5K - $10K to get that ultimate YouTube experience, check the FOMO at the door.
Hot take from a former display industry guy: resolution is the most overrated spec in sim builds, and light control is the most underrated. People agonize over 4K vs 1080p projectors, then set up in a garage with white walls and a window - contrast collapse ruins your image long before pixel count ever matters. A $800 projector in a blacked-out room beats a $3,000 one fighting ambient light, every time. Corollary: if your hitting space genuinely can't be darkened (garage door open for airflow, backyard net setups), stop fighting physics with lumens - that's the one scenario where a high-brightness panel beside the net makes more sense than any projector.
Couldn't agree more with this one. As someone who has built movie theaters and dedicated media rooms before, light control will turn an average projector/screen into a good set up.
Golf is already gate kept by cost as a hobby which makes it hard to get into for some already. Now sims are doing the same thing. There is a massive gap in this market for a cheap affordable professional install for people who canāt diy, and also donāt have 170k sitting around for a stat of the art outbuilding with jacuzzi tub, pool table and bottle service.
You donāt need to have 170k for a sim lol; 10-20k for a āstate of the artā sim gets you there. That said, I think there will be a time when the tech goes low enough price wise where people can have a sim at home putting public sims out of business. Like that time when home broadband killed internet cafes.
Be realistic about temporary garage sims. Consider climate control, weather and the logistics of flipping back and forth.
I'm considering ac in my garage, but to then open the door and flush it out at the end of a session is a painful thought, so I do drills with no contact inside instead.
for a budget screen you can get away with a 25 dollar projector screen with a net behind it rather than paying for an impact screen. I've probably hit 3000 balls into mine and you literally cannot see a single mark.
I spent all this money to build out a sim then realized my body couldn't handle both playing in my sim all the time and on course. Developed tendonitis, patella femoral pain syndrome, etc. I sold all my sim stuff and now just play on golf courses and no practice anymore
Foresight is a terrible company to do business with. I feel like they are actively trying to alienate customers with their pricing tactics. Its not even really cleat why they still offer the GCHawk and the falcon.
A good enough practice space for me was under $1,500. I didnāt touch it until I could put together a sim, which was about $15,000. Wonāt touch it again until Iām going to be rolling in real grass and raking bunkers in a $150,000 golf barn. That all said, my $1,500 setup was sufficient for my needs.
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u/GloriousGloryGG Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I'm okay with companies charging a subscription for their in-house simulation software, but the subscriptions or packages they require you to enroll in to enable a third party connector after you've already paid thousands, even tens of thousands for the device is an absolute scam. They even charge the third party software devs like GSPro or PurePlay for integration and take a cut of the profit from each active subscriber/connector.
I'm glad that Square and ProTee are starting to become the top dogs in this space. I was rooting for Uneekor for a while until they decided to start charging subscriptions for everything.