Golf Launch Monitor APP That Works?! Golfboy App Review

Could this be the best-kept tech secret in golf? In this video I test out the Golfboy app to see if this affordable launch monitor app actually works. I also take a deep dive into all its features, including golf course simulation, swing analysis and more!

Golfboy links:

Golfboy (AppStore)
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1552366622
Not available for Android.

Golfboy Official Website
https://golfboy.jp/en/

Golfboy Usage Guidelines
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pzYMEliO7gX2y6WPhfGAyMpOJ2ZeFxQLYhZaLv-Tz1I/edit#slide=id.g30366125fba_0_24

GBPod (Golfboy Tripod)

GBPod (Golfboy Tripod) – Purchase outside the United States
https://shop.buyee.jp/47storey/a0000493/item/35594_5

About the channel:

Hello I’m Hannah Holden a +2 golfer from Yorkshire, England and this is my brand new YouTube channel Hannah Holden Golf.

Make sure you hit subscribe so I can keep you up to date on all the latest golf gear with my golf equipment reviews.

I’ll also be bringing you tips on how to sharpen up your game with my experience playing in big amateur events and working as a performance coach for England Golf!

If that wasn’t enough I’ll make sure you’re on top of the latest rules of golf.

Can an app turn my iPhone into an accurate launch monitor? Let’s go find out. So, today we’re testing out the Golf Boy app. This is a Japanese app that turns your iPhone into a launch monitor, which is a really interesting concept because the app itself is free, a lot of the functions. There are some that are under a paid subscription, but I think compared to a lot of launch monitors on the market that are very expensive, this is a really interesting product. So today I just want to run you through the different offerings in the app, what it can give you in terms of practicing, helping you improve your game, and also seeing if it is accurate or not. Because for a free/ very small subscription fee service, it makes you think, is it going to be any good? So today, we’re going to find out. So first up, let’s talk about setup and what you need to get this to work because a lot of the accuracy of this is going to depend on how well you get this set up. You do need an iPhone. Sorry Android users. It only works on iPhone. You do then also need a tripod. So I have the official Golf Boy one. This is around £50. You can use any shortlegged tripod, but this does already have like height settings set up on it. So this does make it a little bit easier to pair with the app. If you do just want to use a tripod that you’ve already got at home, you will just require a tape measure so you can measure the height you’ve got the tripod set at. So if you’re using the official Golf Boy app, there’s two different settings on here. So the bottom one we just need to pull up to full height until we see these three triangles here. Clip that into place. And then the top clip we either sit to low, mid, or high. Now this is dependent on the shot length you’re hitting. I’m going to start with shorter clubs. So we’re going to put this into the low setting first. Now here I’m going to be able to set the height of the tripod. So what height I’ve got it set up as. So here I’ve got low. I’m going to be able to set up if I’m right-handed, the units of measurements I want. Now, you can also customize what type of golf ball you’re using. So, here I’m obviously using a range ball. So, I’m going to go in and make sure that setting is selected. We can customize what type of golf ball we’re using. And I think that will give us the most accurate data. So, that might be something we have to dial in at some point. Obviously, every range ball is going to be slightly different. Every golf ball is going to be slightly different. So, if you’re using maybe a Pro V1 versus Velocity, you might have to have this set up differently. So, it’s really nice you can go in and customize this because it’s just going to add that extra level of accuracy. Let’s just start with the standard 1.05. And from there, it’s pretty simple. There’s a big circle which you have to put the ball into on the ground and then it’ll tell you that it’s ready to go and then you can hit yourself. So, I think I’m just going to start with some wedges. Okay. So, these range balls probably a little bit older than some. So, I’ve moved the default ball setting to 1.1 rather than 1.05, which is what a range ball was set at. So, in the settings, one is just like your normal, and then you have custom balls. So, if you’re using different golf balls, you can preset them, add them in, and change what the setting is. I think that’s really nice because you can dial into what you’re going to play with. Now, some people might say, well, what’s the point? Because you then have to have either another launch monitor to dial in the settings, which is what I’m using here. But actually what I’ve also done is just used my rangefinder. So we’ve got different flags out here. There’s one that’s at 60 yards. So when I’ve hit a ball that’s landed next to that, I can then use that and tweak the settings until I get it to the right distance with that. So that’s a really nice way to dial this in. Now we’re only about 5 yards out, but obviously been able to dial that in. So it’s really good. And now I’ve got it within one yard is perfect. So on here the data where that ball landed just past that blue flag I was talking about. We’ve got it as a 62 yard carry height for 59 ft total of 64. We’ve also got a launch angle on here a launch direction. My ball speed, my club head speed and my smash tractor, which is really nice numbers to have. And then I can see on my full swing it said it’s gone 61 yards. So we’re literally within one yard of a 6,000 launch monitor. Again, we’re within two yards there. So, 63 for 65. Now, actually, one of my favorite things about this launch m so far has been the fact that it captures a video of your club coming through the impact zone, which I think is a really helpful visual. You can see the strike clubation on the face. You can see what your club’s doing through this area. And it’s really just helpful to build awareness, I think. So, for me, sometimes I can see my club face getting a little bit shut through that zone. I can see if the strike location’s off, like toe or heel. And that can be really easy. Just think, oh, I’ll do a little drill to help build that up. Just give me a second to hit that subscribe button. It’s right there. Go on. And while you’re there, you might as well drop this video a like and drop us a comment about what else you want to see on the channel. Okay, wedges seem fairly accurate. So, I’m going to move up into N now. Same thing. There’s no way to drop that. Call that a tad low on the first. So, we’re saying 111 yards of carry on here and 110 on the full swing. So, very accurate. Better strike there. 123 verse 120. It’s pretty mindboggling that a phone can be that consistent, isn’t it? Like, I just don’t think you would think that you can make your phone into a launch monitor that would be that accurate again. Very consistent within a couple yards. 115 carry here, 112 on full swing. What I really like about this as well is that you can preset what club you’re using in the app and then it can create a report. So you can get a collection of data for all the shots you’ve hit. So this comes on the screen. It tells you how consistent you are with your carry distance, your total distance, your ball speed, your club speed. It also shows you dispersion. So it shows you this relative to the target. And then we can also just get a list of table of our data. Now, a big reason I think this app is so great is because we know when we look at the shot scope data that loads of golfers don’t really know how far the golf clubs go and that really affects our accuracy when it comes to hitting lots of greens. Now, if we want to improve our greens and regulations, yes, obviously it can work on our technique, make our golf swing better, things like that are always going to help, but actually a big lowhanging fruit is just knowing your carrier distance accurately because there’s no point trying to hit an eight iron 140 yards into a green if you only carry at 125. Right, let’s swap to seven iron. I can tell it’s getting to the cold part of the year because my carry distance is dropping off a little bit, which is also why device like this is really good because you’ll find that you won’t hit your club the same distance throughout the whole season. Like as the weather changes, they’re going to fly at different distances. So 145 on Golf Boy there verse 142. I think it’s about to rain really badly. Oh no. Okay. Just had a short weather delay. It’s very uh sunny 1 minute, shady one minute, rainy one minute in England at the moment. Okay, last iron we’re going to test is five iron and then we’re going to move on to woods. Carry 160 carry 158.3. Pretty damn accurate. So, we’ve got 215 on the launch monitor and 221 in the golf app. So, six yard tolerance. I think I’ll give it that on drive because I mean the fact is anywhere near accurately picking up driver distance when it’s just seeing this. It’s pretty incredible really. That was close. 226.9 on the Fing. 227 carry on the golf boy. Okay, we’ve now got this set into simulator mode. So, you can actually play golf courses on this app. I’d say it’s pretty basic in terms of the visual. So, it’s not like when you’re in a simulator and you feel see the full shots. What you get is a course map in front of you. You can move the target to where you want to aim. You can see the different hazards and obviously it does distance and directional. So you can maybe hit it in a bunker or hit it offline. It’s not just all about distance. Um but it is pretty nice because you can pick different golf course that available on there. There’s some golf courses that Golf Boy have designed themselves. And you can also do custom golf courses. So if you wanted to work on specific shots, specific distances, specific like directions of holes, maybe like left to right or right to left, you are able to do that. So that’s pretty nice touch. So, I’ve hit my driver. It’s M. I’ve got 174 yards to the pin, which feels a long way on the range today. I do really like this for practicing, though, because it gets you out of just beating balls down the range and gives you a better visual and focuses on hitting a good shot. I think it’s a really good way to practice. It also gets you hitting more clubs, changing targets. You can adjust your aim on here. So if you want to kind of go for the right of the green and go for a f section of the green, you can do that. Or just try avoid the short right one. So I’m going to move the target a little bit further left. Might be a bit short on the green. Now this does have an autoput function. So once you get on the green, it’s going to tell you how many puts you’ve had based on how close you hit it. So I hit that 24 ft. That’s given me two putts. So I’ve made a par, which would be a nice start on that hole cuz I’ve gone drive a four iron. So pretty pleased with that. Now what’s nice about this is it does adjust for like sand, rough trees. So if you’re in the trees and you hit a certain height, it will hit them. If you hit it in the rough versus the fairway, it will slow your run down and therefore your total distance. So it is more like playing on the golf course. Is that going to stay in the fairway? Just by about a yard 158 the pin. Oh, I forced that. Oh no, I hit it too far. So that went to 39 ft and 8 in. So that gave me a three foot for a bogey. Now another really fun thing we can do with Golf Boy is analyze our golf swing. So there’s a swing analyze a setting where you can take video footage of your swing. It shows you a few different analysis with different lines or different spine angles and you can also then export those videos and send them to a golf coach if you want tips on your swing. I’ve just set this up on a tripod behind me and it picks up where I am stood and also picks up the golf ball automatically. So then once I’m over the ball in my address position, it’s going to tell me that it’s ready for me to swing and then it will capture the shot. So once we do that, we get a few different things on the screen. We can get different angles or measurements on my body. So I can see the angle of my knees, my hips, my shoulders if I want to. I can move on and have a spine angle line. But one I really like is one where we have different plane lines and also a circle around my head. So we can move through this swing in slow-mo, analyze the different positions we’re in. It might be that you’re working on something specific with a coach and they can tell you different positions to work on with this, but I just think it’s a really nice visual and a great way to kind of build another feature into the app that’s going to help you out. You can also take all the guides off if you want and you can easily click through different positions. So address position, top of swing, impact, finish. Another fun thing is the motion setting, so you can see the club’s path throughout your swing, which is really nice. It’s just more of a fun graphic, I would say. And we’ve also got a panorama feature where we can see screenshots of different parts of the swing in motion. Definitely see a few things I could uh do with working on in my swing this winter from this. I think I’ve covered most of the stuff we can do for long game here, but there’s also some cool putting features in this. Let’s go over to the putting green and see how they work. Okay, putting setup exactly the same as what we saw as when we were using this as a launch monitor. So again, we can set the height of this. We can set a target for what we’re using. So I’ve just set this up at 15 ft. And then we’re going to get some really good ideas here on distance, launch direction, face angle, ball speed, club speed. I think I’m going to be most interested in the face angle here because 90% of the start line of your P comes down to what the face angle is. This is a really good way to analyze and see what that is and work on your start line. Now, I’ve just put a club down on the ground, and we’re going to line this up just to make sure our launch direction is accurate. And just get that matched up against the launch direction line on here in the circle. We’re ready to go. Really cool to see the overhead putt view of this though. That actually shows me where my ball’s setting off relative to that target line. So that’s saying my club face was a little bit open and it was setting off a little bit to the right, which is generally probably what I see on my bad put out on the golf course. So, off the back of knowing that, I’ve really managed to tidy that up. My launch direction is down to 0.3. My face angle 0.4. So, it does show you how just knowing the data and knowing where the ball’s starting, what your club face is doing. Can really help you tidy up some mistakes. So, we’ve tested all the elements of this app out now, and I have to say, I’ve been super impressed with it. There’s so many different features, which I think makes the price point really worth it. And also the overall package is so affordable compared to other things on the market we’re looking at that give you this type of information. Now for me the big thing is it makes practice just so much more interesting. And I think a lot of the thing that holds people back in terms of practice is that it can be quite boring sometimes working on your game. So having some tech to give you more insight but also to make it more interesting is just going to get more people out there practicing and proving their games. It’s really great to see the things like carry distance, club head speed, ball speed, all being within an accurate enough parameter that I think it’s really helpful to help your game. Obviously, they’re not all 100% perfect every time, but for me, they were within that five yard marker, which I think really is accurate enough for all club golfers to be working on their car distances and improving their game. You do need to dial the ball sessions in, but I think there’s always reasonables enough ways to work out how to do that, and you’re probably only going to have to do that once. And once you’ve dialed that in for the different golf balls you use, then the app’s going to be really easy to set up every other time you’re using it. I really love the simulation game. Obviously, it’s pretty simple in terms of the graphics, but I think that’s absolutely fine. It brings a different element to the driving range. Allows you to really practice that oncourse element, course management, hitting different shots, hitting different targets, and that’s something that’s invaluable because obviously we play golf on a golf course, not on a driving range. So, bringing that environment to your practice is perfect. I love the images through the impact zone so you can see how your club’s working, be that be when you’re putting or when you’re hitting full shots. I especially found it really helpful on the putting green and really like that visual. And you know, there are apps out there that just charge you to draw lines on your golf swing. So having that area where you can analyze your swing, film clips, put lines on it, add the graphics, send them out to your golf course for extra advice is really helpful. So for me, obviously the whole package isn’t free. There’s some elements you have to add on and either get the $6.99 or the $9.99 subscription, but I definitely think it’s worth it. And I also really like the fact that it’s a monthly subscription. So, you can sign up for it say for 6 months over winter when you really want to practice and then maybe not use it in summer if you’re out on the golf course more. It’s very flexible. A really good option for a different part of the market who want something that’s going to help them practice, improve their game, but maybe don’t want all that upfront investment. Definitely impressed with this Golf Y app. Let me know what you think and if you use it and how you get on with