With the popularity of the best golf watches and the best golf apps, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the handheld GPS has fallen somewhat out of favor. However, after using the Blue Tees Ringer GPS handheld for the last six weeks, I was quickly reminded why some of the best golf GPS devices are so much fun to use.
Coming in at $199, you really get a lot for your money, all packed into a premium, well-built and compact device. Everything is controlled through the single centre button and a 2.5in touchscreen. The touchscreen is very impressive for a product of its kind, even if it does fall just short of the smartphone quality screen I tested on the more expensive SkyCaddie SX550 GPS. That said, the Ringer's touchscreen is bright, incredibly responsive and easy to navigate while the graphics are crystal clear too.
The rest of the device builds off the premium touchscreen with a textured back side to help grip as well as a built-in magnet which is ideal for being attached to the side of a golf cart or a golf trolley while you’re playing. For me, it's best to use the Ringer when you’re riding in a golf cart, although it's compact enough to be kept in your pocket for the whole round if you’d prefer to have it always by your side. Offering 10 hours of battery life, this should cover you for at least two full rounds before you need to recharge.
Onto the functionality of the device, and I was blown away by the amount you can do. Of course it has all the basic minimums you’d expect from a device like this, covering front, middle and back distances to greens and distance to hazards but it also comes with useful functionalities like shot distance, scorecard features and green view with pin placement. If you have the Blue Tees Player+ Speaker too, the Ringer can act as a remote to control the music and volume.
Cycling between all these features is as simple as a swipe on the screen, which makes it really quick and easy to navigate when you’re on course. Accuracy was very good too and fell within one or two yards when I was comparing it against one of the best golf rangefinders on the market. You can use as many or as few of the features as you want, but it’s safe to say Blue Tees has thought of every possibility when it comes to data gathering of course.
If you sync the Ringer GPS to the Blue Tees Game mobile app (which is available on iOS and Android devices), there are even more features now at your fingertips. With over 40,000 courses pre-downloaded to the device, the app offers visual flyovers of every hole, allowing you to play exact layup locations or decipher exactly how far away a very specific tree is.
This also unlocks individual shot tracking capabilities whereby you log on the app every time you hit the ball and with which club. Over time, this will allow you to go into much more detail about the strengths and weaknesses of your game as well as get a better idea of how far you hit each club.
To me, this is all a little bit too much of a fuss when you’re trying to play golf. Using both the Ringer and your smartphone to work out yardages and then having to manually add each shot if you want shot tracking distracts from the game at hand. If you’re really into the idea of shot tracking, then the Arccos Caddie system will be much better suited to you as it does everything automatically without you having to interact with your phone.
If you’re after a fuss-free GPS, the Ringer GPS without the premium subscription is the way to go. These two features linked to the app will also require you to subscribe to the Blue Tees premium membership which costs $49.99 a year. Decent value, yes, but not worth it for the complexity of it in my opinion.
Overall, the Ringer is a superb handheld GPS device in its own right and is best suited to be used as such. Superb build quality, premium touch of details, and a feature-packed base system that covers everything plus a little bit extra.
