Buying the best golf watch can be like having a virtual caddy on your wrist. Not only do they come with regular smartwatch features like GPS and activity tracking, the best golf watches also deliver course maps and insight, helping you to avoid hazards, find the pin, and even improve your swing in the process.
Whether that's through built in accelerometers or pair with club tags, there's no reason a good golf watch can't help you improve your stroke and elevate your love of the game. A good golf watch can even suggest which clubs you should use for your shots, what's not to like?
As mentioned you'll also get a host of other great smartwatch features including workout tracking and navigation, but all of the watches here are picked because they're dedicated primarily to golf. As such, you'll find plenty of entries from Garmin's Approach range, as well as others.
So if you're playing plenty of golf but still only using the best smartwatches or best fitness trackers, upgrade your game today with our top picks.
These have all been relentlessly tested by dedicated golfers, with top picks for 2025 updates to include the Garmin Approach S70 and the Shot Scope V5.
The quick list
The best golf watch overall
New for our 2025 top pick, the S70 comes loaded with 43,000 courses and is truly the top premium golf watch on the market. It's got a great screen and UI, superb battery life, and excellent game tracking features.
Best budget
Packed with features and designed to give you insights into your golf game, the S12 picks a lot of Garmin's best golf features at a small price tag.
Best premium
Tag Heuer's mega-premium offering is a sumptuous smartwatch, but at a hefty price.
Load the next product...
Best for maps
Garmin Approach S62's bright, full screen and vector maps offer a more complete, interactive experience on the course.
Best for shot detection
The Shot Scope V5, like our previous pick the V3, comes bundled with 16 free club trackers and brilliant built in shot detection and analysis.
The best golf watch overall
Our recently reviewed Garmin Approach S70 is our absolute top pick when it comes to the best golf watch on the market.
With a premium price tag, it comes in two sizes, boasting a brilliant AMOLED display and a premium ceramic chassis. While it might be one of the more expensive options, the display is crisp, clear, and bright. There are three colorways, and overall its a really impressive design that will look right at home on any course. It has three buttons for navigation and an extensive array of golf features.
Notably, it comes preloaded with course data from 43,000 tracks around the world, making it useful pretty much anywhere. You'll get distance accuracy, help with yardages, a hole map, and hazard information too.
There's also shot tracking data and a companion app for recording your scores. You'll even get Garmin's Enhanced PlaysLike Distance feature that gives yardage based on topography data and even wind direction.
You also get Garmin's great suite of health and fitness features, so you can use it off the course as well as on. There's also GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 5ATM water rating for those wet days. A premium golf watch with a price tag to match, the S70 is king right now.
Read our full Garmin Approach S70 review
The best budget golf watch
The Garmin Approach S12 is an entry-level golf watch, and one of the best available in its price bracket. It design and features belie its modest price tag, and include detailed maps of 42,000 courses, plus GPS that proved super accurate in our tests. The Approach S12 syncs with the same Garmin Golf app as the company's higher-end watches, putting a huge array of data at your fingertips and making it a particularly good value for money.
Although it lacks a color screen, which makes maps a little trickier to interpret, but it's easy to read in direct sunlight and further compensates with outstanding battery life, and we easily got several weeks' use out of it before needing to recharge. The main disadvantage is the need to record shots manually, which more advanced players might find tedious, and isn't a concern with higher-end watches that offer automatic shot-tracking.
Read our full Garmin Approach S12 review
The best premium golf watch
Golf watches don't come much more supreme than the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition and if you're after the best premium golf watch then this is likely it. Channelling that TAG Heuer pedigree, this is a sleek, chic, robust, and well-designed golf watch. It's comfy to wear, strong and tough, has a secure fit, and is beautifully finished.
The 1.39in/35.3mm AMOLED display is crisp, bright, and clear. However, the use of some colors in some shaded on-course areas could be more distinct. The Calibre E4 Golf Edition's golf functionality is excellent, and combined with the TAG Heuer pedigree and terrific smartwatch functionality, ensuring it offers the fullest package going.
Specifically, there are more than 40,000 preloaded courses available, and a virtual caddie that will learn your shots and distances so it can suggest the best match in future rounds. One can critique it slightly for not offering the most bleeding-edge golf features in 2024 that some competitors can offer such as green contour depiction, and 'plays like' functionality, but those are brand-new features on the very latest watches. The price tag will just be flat-out too much for some, too.
If you've got a very healthy budget and are looking for the best golf watch at the premium end of the market (which is also a top-end, high-quality smartwatch) then the TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition is a brilliant choice.
Read our full TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition soon.
The best golf watch for maps
The Garmin Approach S62 offers everything you get from the S42 and more, if you can afford the extra cash. Garmin's Virtual Caddie app suggests clubs based on wind speed and direction, and the distance you typically swing with each type. You can check out the wind before taking your shot, and there's a full vector map complete with touch targeting, which allows you to see the distance to any point by simply tapping the extra-large 1.3in screen.
Its larger battery means it can keep running for up to 14 days in smartwatch mode, or 20 hours with GPS enabled. It also boasts a wide range of everyday health tracking tools too, including all-day stress monitoring (based on changes in heart rate), relaxation reminders. There's a pulse-ox sensor for measuring blood oxygen saturation at night, and performing spot-checks during the day.
Garmin Pay allows you to make contactless payments (provided your bank is one of those supported), you can use it to control music on your smartphone, receive app notifications, check the weather forecast, and send text responses (if you have an Android phone).
Read our full Garmin Approach S62 review
The Best golf watch for shot detection
The Shot Scope V3 was our top pick for a long time when it comes to shot tracking, and the V5 is a worthy successor.
It continues the formula of value for money and easy of use. It might not be the most premium option – it only comes in one color and there's no touchscreen – but you also get 16 free club tags for shot tracking and analysis. These attach to the butt of your club's grip and will automatically record data from each shot, giving you helpful information to help you improve your game. Most other manufacturers charge either for the tags or a subscription to use them, so getting them for free with the V5 makes this pick a no-brainer.
The V3 had automatic shot tracking after your hits, but you have to activate manually with the V5. That means you need to activate the track option after hitting a shot which takes some getting used to.
Overall though, the Shot Scope V5 is excellent value for money, much cheaper than many of the other options on the market, and you get those club tags for shot analysis thrown in.
Read our full Shot Scope V5 review
How to choose the best golf watch for you
The best golf watch for you will depend on a variety of different factors. Firstly, it needs to be the right price for you, whether you’re after a high-end premium watch or a more conservatively-priced model. It needs to have the right features for you. If you struggle with club choice, you're better off with one of the premium models which has Garmin's 'virtual caddie' club recommendation functionality. If you'd rather not have this feature, you could save some money and opt for the Garmin Approach S12.
It's also worth checking if your local courses are available pre-loaded onto the watch, or available to download on Garmin, SkyGolf or Shot Scope's companion apps. If your stomping grounds aren't available, you may not get all the functionalities you want.
You might need more typical smartwatch features such as sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring and notification functions, or you might prefer a wristwatch with slimmed-down features to save money on the total price. SkyCaddie LX5's simple pedometer and heart rate functions don't hold a candle to Garmin's features, which crib from its wildly successful fitness and running watches.
Finally, check the battery life. If you don't like charging your watch between games, you'll want to plump for an S62, while watches with a shorter battery life will need you to remember to charge each time you head out the door.
Below, we’ve answered a couple of your most-asked questions, as well as an insight into how we test each watch as we get them.
What is a golf rangefinder?
A rangefinder is a tool that helps you measure the distance between you and your target, using either GPS or a laser. GPS rangefinders (as found in golf watches) are faster to use, but laser ones are more accurate. Golf watches and rangefinders are slightly different, but using a wrist-mounted GPS device can act in place of a free-standing laser rangefinder.
Does Fitbit make a golf watch?
Fitbit doesn't make a dedicated golf watch, but all of Fitbit's GPS-enabled watches have a golf-tracking mode that you can use to monitor calories burned during your game. This will only be accurate if you're walking though, not using a golf buggy.
How we test the best golf watches
We test each of the best golf watches comprehensively. We look at the watch’s tracking technology, battery life, and compatibility with different phones. Does it have the technology to track and calculate the distance of your shots? Can its GPS technology map your favorite courses?
We take each watch for several test-drives on real golf courses to test all their key features.
