A tiny device that can hugely impact your golf game.
Arccos
Golf is witnessing a shift toward sports technology, driven by an increasing consumer desire for actionable, athletic intelligence. Leading this movement for years has been Arccos Golf, which is also known as the official game tracker of the PGA TOUR. The company recently introduced Arccos Air, a pocketable device that automatically tracks every golf shot in a round via AI, in an effort to help elevate your game.
Historically, understanding your on-course performance required you to tag every individual club with a screw-in sensor on the butt end of the grip, and also carry a smartphone throughout the entire round. Arccos Air eliminates these requirements by packing gyroscope and accelerometer technology into a lightweight box that’s roughly the size of an AirPods case. Slipping easily into your pants pocket while you play, it uses advanced motion sensors and GPS to analyze golf swing mechanics and pinpoint your exact location on the course without distracting you or interrupting play.
The core technology relies on AI models trained on a massive performance Arccos dataset consisting of 25 million rounds, 4 trillion data points and 1.5 billion golf shots – allowing the system to accurately distinguish actual shots from practice swings automatically. Plus it takes an educated guess at which club you used for any given shot. Once a round concludes, the Arccos app processes the data to deliver personalized insights, clearly indicating where you gained or lost strokes against benchmarks and offering specific recommendations on what to practice.
According to CEO and co-founder Sal Syed, the device removes the biggest barrier golfers have faced in understanding their game: managing hardware or thinking about technology during play. Arccos Air operates independently or alongside existing Arccos Smart Sensors, providing you with flexibility in how you track your game while maintaining full access to the broader ecosystem, including strokes gained analytics, AI strategy, and comprehensive green maps.
As for how smoothly it works, I took it out for a round. After powering on the device, I opened the app which immediately recognized the course I was on. Loved that the app doubles as a GPS interactive course map, if you decide to leave it on during your round. I watched it for a few holes, and then just simply backed out of the app. But even in the background, it records every shot. The device is so light, I honestly forgot it was in my front pocket. After my round, I had to go into the app and adjust the club selection for a lot of my shots. In some cases, I simply couldn’t remember which club I used. So that somewhat threw off my overall statistics. The unit itself reminds me a whole lot of the old Arccos Link that you clipped to your belt – a product that you had to pair with club sensors.
But the product works as billed. As much as I like technology in general, I’m not a fan of using it on the golf course. So I love that with the Arccos Air, I don’t need to fuss with it durinng the round.
Arccos Air is available through the company’s website and retail channels for $350, a price that includes an initial one-year game tracking subscription. And it works with both iOS and Android operating systems.