Garmin Approach S44 Essential Golf GPS Smartwatch AMOLED Display On-Course Features Silver Aluminum Bezel with Black Silicone Band

***UPDATE JUNE 2025: After four months of using the watch, I've noticed that about one in every five-ish rounds, the S44 watch will randomly reboot in the middle of my round, and I lose all of my shot distance data from the previous holes. Garmin is providing a replacement through the warranty. I will update this review again in a few months if the replacement has the same issue. The S44 is my first golf GPS watch after using just a rangefinder the last few years, and I'll never go back to the rangefinder life. This thing is awesome! I went for the S44 because I'm more of a traditional watch person for day to day life, so I don't need all the extra health-related features. Still, the S44 has a packed amount of golf-specific features. Here are the features that I especially love: -It vibrates to prompt you to select which club you just hit after each shot -After each hole, you can confirm your score for that hole and optionally, you can select if you hit the fairway or left/right, how many putts, and if you had any penalties. You don't have to select that every time, but it helps for being able to see your game stats later -You can easily adjust where the pin is located on the green to get more accurate numbers on the watch -Gives yardages to dogleg holes -Unless you're hitting a 30-footer putt or longer, it doesn't detect your putting swing, but I believe it still approximates where your ball is on the green based on how long you stand in a specific area. So while it won't prompt you to select your putter after you hit a putt, the app will sometimes show you where you were on the green afterwards -I can go through the app after my round to re-live my round hole by hole with the course maps, club selection, and yardage numbers -It's surprisingly lightweight -Does a good job counting steps -The glass screen feels super smooth The watch band is secure and has tons of size options -After one round, the battery only drained about 15%. I have a feeling you could use the S44 for 3 or 4 rounds without needing to recharge Things that could be better: -The fact that Garmin charges a monthly fee to have better course maps and slope is criminal. I know ten bucks a month is not bad, but why charge for that? Why not just include that as an incredible feature built into their watches? They could capture more of the market by not being greedy -I wish I could explore courses in the app before my rounds. Luckily I can just use 18Birdies for this, but it feels like it would be an easy thing to add to the Garmin app too -This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a natural part of the watch: it will vibrate to prompt you to select which club you used even after your practice swings. This feels obvious in hindsight because how would the watch know whether it's your real swing or a practice one. Still, it was a little bit of a mental adjustment to expect the small vibration about 5 seconds after my practice swings too Overall, I love the S44 and I hope it lasts me the next 3 to 5 years at least! Being able to get instant numbers from my watch instead of constantly pulling out the rangefinder has been a game changer. Makes my rounds faster and more strategic. Read more

UPDATE 07/24/2025: A new version of the System Software for the watch was released about a week ago (version 6.18). It fixed all the issues that I had been having with the watch!! I am upgrading my review to 5 stars and recommending the watch. Kudos to the sofware engineers at Garmin for staying with the problems until solved. It's a shame Garmin released the watch before properly Beta testing. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ EDIT: 07/05/2025 Currently the S44 is a DO NOT BUY. The autoshot feature is not reliable and only works randomly. Without this feature working, you will not be able to track how far you hit your clubs ( Shot Map Function). System Software updat 6.17 was supposed to fix this, but has not. Garmin Rep informs the next System update will, but does not have any idea when. I suspect it is not a software issue, but is instead a poor piece of hardware in the watch. If it is hardware related, it will likely never be corrected. The rep volunteered that the S70 ($700) does not have the issue. If and when the issue is resolved, I will edit this review again with the good news. Until then, do not buy! I like the watch but.... It does almost too much. I replaced my 5 yr old failed S20 with the S44. Different operating method that takes a while to figure out. The manual is only somewhat helpful, it takes intuitive trial and error to fully learn. Youtube is your freind. Otherwise, the watch is a five star. Battery life is nearly as good as the S20, easily get three 18 hole rounds on a charge, and over a week if not golfing. Display is bright enough for a sunny day. The band is an improvement over the S20. EDIT: I think a downgrade to 2 stars or upgrade to 5 stars may be coming. Watch often (always?) drops out of "PLAY GOLF" while playing golf and needs a "Resume" to get back into the round. All data then is lost from before dropping out. Occasionally the gross score will be kept, but gps data is always lost. I've been in contact with customer service and am waiting to see how the issue becomes resolved. (Up to 5* vs down to 2*) Read more

My husband loves this. It was a gift for him and it’s super easy to use and seems to be pretty accurate. Easy to read and great quality. I still think it’s a bit high for the price but overall, I’m happy with it since he is! Read more

great purchased reasonable price ! battery last long - good for 3 rounds of golf ! i finally use it and reads the back, middle and the front pin right ( comparing to my range finder ) lightweight compared to my old garmin models ! the watch is in great display even if it goes idle - chk the setting ! im glad i bought this S44 👍 Read more

Watch is amazing. Great screen, functionality is nice, yardage is accurate, courses load quickly. Band is terrible, cheap, too short and hard to put on. Makes the watch useless, so plan to order a new band on day 1. Read more

I upgraded from the Garmin Approach S20 to this watch. I love it. It has all of the golf features needed and also serves as a good activity watch and a good daily watch. All of the golf functions work as expected. Zero complaints there. The health and activity functions are good for tracking stats if you are in need of that. But as a daily watch I found it useful in that it can control my music playing on my phone through my bluetooth headphones. So I can change track or adjust volume on the watch instead of fiddling with buttons on the headphones, all while leaving the phone in my pocket. Read more

I have played around 5 to 6 rounds with the watch so far, and I like it very much. Good features and fairly easy and straight forward to operate it; however, the watch freezes when making the turn to the back nine. Not sure if it has to do with the fact that the starting hole was 10th hole on those days and the watch gets confused? By the way, I did set it up for the 10th hole to be the start of the round. Otherwise, happy with the watch. Read more