Overview
- Garmin unveiled the Approach S72 on Tuesday and is selling the new golf-focused smartwatch with a suggested starting price of $799.99.
- The S72 arrives in 43mm and 47mm sizes with bright AMOLED screens, a titanium bezel, sapphire lens, a ComfortFit fabric band, a speaker and microphone, a built-in flashlight, and battery life rated up to about 20 hours with GPS on.
- New golf tools include on-wrist swing metrics (hand speed, backswing length, wrist rotation), shot-linked biometric data that ties heart rate to rounds, a Driving Range activity mode that logs practice as workouts, and green-contour reading for putt direction.
- Garmin says some advanced features — including green reading, aerial imagery and detailed putting analytics — require an active Garmin Golf membership, and early reviews flagged that subscription gating as a friction point.
- Reviewers praised the S72’s training and lifestyle upgrades but wanted a separate, higher-tier MARQ Golfer Gen 3; the launch continues Garmin’s steady, iterative S-series approach and may steer serious golfers toward paid cloud services when choosing a device.