REVIEW: Shot Navi W1-GL GPS Watch

Simple and Accurate Distances

More features and more complex doesn’t always mean better. If a product has too much going on, it can be hard to learn all the features and can be too tedious for regular use. The Shot Navi W1-GL GPS watch offers a straight forward, easy to use, accurate GPS watch. While Shot Navi has been popular in Japan for years, they are just now finding their way into the US. You can easily purchase a Shot Navi GPS watch off Amazon for a very reasonable price. If you want a simple to use, nice looking watch that offers accurate distances, this is a solid choice.

Shot Navi makes 4 different golf GPS models. They have a handheld, voice, fitness/golf watch band and the golf GPS watch (W1-GL). I went with the white version of this watch to test on the AZ courses. It is about your standard “Casio” watch size with a nice silicone band. Sure I’m not really a watch guy, but this one was very comfortable and stylish enough that I could wear it off the course as a “regular” watch.

The Shot Navi has a black and white LCD display that was easy to read in every light; bright sun or dark shade. I found the numbers to be a nice size that I didn’t have to use a magnifying glass to read them, but yet I could still get a couple other features on the screen without scrolling for everything. Depending on your preference you can do a dark background or a white background on the watch face for your eyes preference.

The Shot Navi really shines on the course because using the features is so easy. I hate having to read instructions to make use of a product. This one required no reading since all the buttons are labeled and function as expected. The up button either advances the page or raises your score, the down button does the opposite, the select button works simply and overall there was virtually no learning curve to put this watch in play. It also connects to GPS quickly so that I could turn it on while standing on the first tee and before I headed down the fairway to find my drive I already had yardages. It is preloaded with courses so unless you are playing something brand new, it is most likely on it. The distance tracker allows you to accurately brag to your friends about that bombed drive. There are also distance to hazards for approach shots and unseen dangers. It obviously does the standard pin, front, center and back as well as auto hole advance. I found the distances to be right on when comparing to my laser rangefinder.

The Shot Navi has really good on course battery life. I used it for 18 holes and I didn’t even use half the battery. It could easily go 36 in one day, I think it might even stretch to 54 holes if you have the energy to play that many in one day. If you turn the GPS off, the battery will last a long time in just watch mode. My problem was that I forgot to turn the GPS off so it kept running killing the battery by the next time I was going to use it. I did really like the charging clip. It uses a 4 contact point charging system like many GPS watches, but since the power cord is a clip, it actually charged every time I connected it. While there were many positives to the battery life and charging speed, I still can’t leave this watch in my bag and show up at every round without charging it.

The Shot Navi W1-GL isn’t going to break the bank, but will give you a nice, easy to use, accurate GPS watch. I can’t say that this watch converted me from laser rangefinders, but it certainly is a solid choice for a golf GPS watch. You don’t really need 9 million functions that simply confuse the user and add to the price tag. Simple, easy, accurate yardages in a comfortable watch at a reasonable price is just a nice. Check out the Shot Navi W1-GL watch for your golf yardage needs.

For more information: http://shotnavi.net/en/

Quick Hits:
+Easy to use
+Visually sized right
+Comfortable
+Quick set-up
+Accurate
+Good battery life

–Needs to be regularly charged for golf