Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are basically two kinds of Golf GPS units, the full service ones, embodied by the SkyCaddie line and others that give you distance to the green, front and back, as well as distances to obstacles and carries needed to clear them. Then there is the kind I call GPS lite, the only give you the distance to the green, front and back. This limits their usefulness but they are also much simpler to use and often less expensive. The Izzo Swami GPS 4000 is among the GPS lite group. You get the distances to the green, shot distance that allows you to accurately measure your shot distance, you also get an electronic score card and can edit the front and back distances to the greens, and the unit will remember them for the future. There is no subscription needed and more than 25,000 courses are preloaded. I compared it to the SkyCaddie SGX during a round of golf at Fossil Trace in Golden Colorado. It detected the satellites even when indoors as fast as the SGX. Once it did, it showed the closest courses and selecting the one I was on was a snap. The operating manual states that it will detect them in less than a minute after a hot start, (less than one hour off) and three for a warm start (less than 4 hours) The distances were accurate to within one yard when compared to the SGX, sprinkler heads and cart mounted GPS. The distance display stabilized a little faster than the SGX. It was also easier to use than the GPS, unless, of course, you want distances to obstacles. The unit is water resistant which is useful for a machine meant to be used outdoors in all kinds of weather. My unit came shrink-wrapped with a wall charger and a USB cable. It can be charged from the wall or a computer USB port. It also came with a nice little neoprene bag to carry it, a sprocket knob with two Phillips screws to screw it on the back of the unit (you only need one) and a belt clip. The belt clip slides easily on the belt clip, and there is a key that you can press on the top of the clip that allows it to slide out for storage. Both belt clip and unit fit in the neoprene bag easily. The clip seemed a bit flimsy to me but worked fine on the course. One clever thing I noticed was that the sprocket knob allows the unit to hang from the clip vertically, like all others, but you can also fix it at any desired angle. This is important because, when I showed it to my wife who liked its simplicity and ease of use, she said that women players don't wear belts and that she could clip it on to her pocket where it could easily fall off. Well, she can just turn the clip 90 degrees and clip it on to the belt loops in the slacks or skirt and there she goes. A very clever design. After eighteen hoes (about 4 1/2) hours the battery charge was down to 2 bars, which per the manual represents eight hours. If playing at a non crowded course where 18 holes can be done in 4 hrs, the unit should work for three rounds of golf or a total of 12 hrs for a fully charged unit. All and all a most impressive gadget.