Best Golf Swing Analyzers: Our Top 8 Products For Golfers (2020)

The new era of stats has overtaken the golf world. Gone are the less-than-useful stats of total putts per round and greens in regulation. 

If you hit 18 greens but you’re 100 feet from the hole every time, your round may look good on paper but you actually need to work on your iron play!

Strokes-gained has taken over the PGA tour statistics, and it shows much more accurately who’s playing well and in what segment of the game they’re doing better than their competitors. 

But these stats are reliant on having an army of volunteers on the course reporting each and every shot played by every player.

The Arccos 360 Tracking System is an ingenious method of bringing this type of data to the average golfer. 

When you’ve got all the sensors screwed into your grips, open up the app and pair each one, one-by-one. 

Then when you get to the golf course, it’ll figure out what course you’re on, download the map and you start your round.

You do have to carry your phone in your pocket throughout the round so it can record when you hit your shot, which might be off-putting for some people. The sensors are tuned to detect whether you’re taking a practice swing or hitting a shot, and won’t record two strokes from the same spot if you take a mulligan.

If you whiff, or if you notice that it didn’t record a shot, you’ll need to add that shot on later, which is fairly easy to do. This is most common when tapping in a short putt, or if a putt was conceded to you.

One major drawback is if you use a putter with a counterweight, there’s no way to screw the sensor into the putter grip. Without a putter sensor, the app never knows that you’ve finished a hole and moved on to the next one. It’s a headache trying to add the putts in at the end of each hole. 

If you’re using a counter-weighted putter, I’d skip the Arccos system entirely until they come up with a solution to this issue.

But if you’re using a regular putter, this is the closest thing you’ll get to a complete course management coach. 

One note: the durability score is low because the batteries on the trackers die after 1-2 years and cannot be replaced! 

They do offer a steep discount on replacement trackers but it’s disappointing that there aren’t replaceable batteries. Arccos’ customer service is excellent, though.

Indoor golf simulators are popping up all over the country, giving golfers the opportunity to get the feeling of playing a round of golf even when the weather isn’t cooperating. 

The fact that many of these establishments offer food and booze as well makes them an awfully compelling destination, especially if there’s snow on the ground and several months before golf courses will open for business.

Most of these places have launch monitors like TrackMan driving their simulators, so to bring one into your home hasn’t always been cost effective. Rapsodo’s R-Motion Golf Simulator and Swing Analyzer uses a different, lower cost method to bring a simulator into your home.

You start by attaching a clip to each shaft just underneath the grip. These are essentially weightless and shouldn’t be distracting at all. When you address the ball, you have to pause briefly for the sensor to sync, then swing away!

I found that a smartphone or tablet was sufficient to run a decent driving range, but if you’re planning to use this as a golf simulator, you’ll want to get a laptop or desktop that meets the software’s minimum requirements. 

It comes stock with 15 really nice courses (the best known are probably Pinehurst #2 and Congressional Country Club), and there’s an option to pay around $500 for hundreds more courses. 

An optimal setup would include a projector hooked up to your computer to allow you to watch the shots develop on the wall in front of you.

The stats provided are thorough and useful, though I felt like every 5th or 6th shot just didn’t reflect what I felt like the swing would actually produce. 

It’s still accurate enough to help golfers improve at home, and well worth the investment if you’ve got a place that will accomodate the set up.

Once you’ve got the SC200 in place, you’ll use the included remote control to choose which club you’re hitting so it can predict the launch angle and give you more accurate numbers.

The remote control is easy to use but I had to push the buttons really hard to get them to register. I question the durability of what feels like a fairly flimsy remote control, so make sure you’re storing it safely and handling it gently.

The SC200 measures carry distance, swing speed, ball speed, smash factor (a fun metric that indicates how well-hit the ball is — hit the sweet spot perfectly for max smash), and that’s it. So the data is useful, but it’s limited in scope.

I’d rate this higher if it estimated roll-out based on spin rates, and provided launch angles. Seeing as how we’re in the “launch angle revolution” where distances are being maxed out by perfecting the launch angle for each golfer’s swing, it’s a notable omission. 

And if you’re hitting a driver, while it’s useful to know your carry distance, you may be losing overall yardage if you max out carry distance without thought to roll-out.
It also required a reset more often than I’d like, as it seems like maybe the RAM or cache gets full and it starts to freeze up. And you have to be careful with practice swings, as it’ll register those. 

If you’re looking for overall number trends, you don’t want your practice swings factored in.

Overall, though, this is an incredible little launch monitor for the price. After a few range sessions you’ll wonder how you ever lived without a little robot calling out your carry distances after every shot.

While the full-swing analysis is only somewhat helpful, this thing really shines in its putting analysis. 

If putting is the weakest part of your game, the Blast Golf Swing Trainer is worth taking a good long look at.

You may have noticed that the two previous swing analyzers reviewed both screw into the small hole at the end of the grip. 

This one wraps over the edge of the grip, making it usable with counter-weighted putters and oversized putting grips as well. 

The app is a little buggy, but if you can get it synced up, it’s a well-designed app that records important data like tempo and clubface rotation. 

Clubface rotation is a major influence on whether a putt will be made, but it’s often overlooked because it’s hard to measure and hard to see with the naked eye.

With the Blast Golf Swing Trainer, you’ll get detailed information about your putting stroke as well as drills to help improve your weak points. 

It’s as good as a putting lesson, with the added benefit of being able to track your progress over time.

If you add in a small tripod or have a friend come along to video you (or buy a SelfieGolf clip, reviewed below), you can record your strokes in the Blast app. Having the video helps you visualize a perfect stroke and gets you closer to making more putts.

The full swing analysis is good but not great. It’s clear that Blast has focused in on putting improvement, and in that department they’ve nailed it. 

While you can try using it without it being linked to your smartphone and just download the data later, it’s much more useful if you can get real-time feedback. 

Because this is linked to your hand movement, it has to base your clubhead speed on estimates based on the length of your clubs, so you have to enter precise measurements of each club before using it. 

Even with these entered, I tested the Zepp 2 against a professional launch monitor and was disappointed to find that the clubhead speed registered 10-20% off from the actual speed in a lot of cases.

The driver was the most accurate, but was still about 5 mph off regularly. If that was the case with all the clubs, I’d say that this is a great unit for the price. 

But as I went into the shorter clubs, the variance jumped. Suddenly the Zepp reported speeds 10-12 mph slower than the launch monitor.

That much of an error is enough to cause someone to start using the wrong shaft flex. So it needs a bit of work there.

But oh man, the visuals that this thing provides are awesome! If you’re looking for futuristic swing analysis and demonstrations of your swing path and plane, the Zepp 2 is unparalleled. 

This can really help you if you feel like your clubhead loses its position in your backswing or if you have issues coming over the top and hitting pulls. 

Having a full visual of your swing planes can show you exactly where the club starts to deviate from the proper path. 

The Zepp will then suggest drills to improve your tempo and plane. It can sometimes be hard to explain how hand and body position affect the clubhead path, so the visuals provided by the Zepp 2 are incredibly useful.

The Sports Sensors radar system will provide that feedback with a highly accurate swing speed measurement. My biggest worry is that you’ll focus only on overall swing speed and start swinging out of your shoes to try to max that number out.

Sure, any golfer would love to swing the club a bit faster to eke out more yards from every shot. But I believe the best way to produce more distance is to figure out how to use the swing you have to hit the ball on the sweet spot more consistently. 

Unless you’re actively training to increase your strength, agility and speed, having a swing speed monitor will take your focus off of making solid contact and will encourage you to just swing as hard as you can. 

Be careful with a device like this, or it could start to wreak havoc on your golf swing. But it’s a reliable, accurate device that can be helpful in the proper circumstances.

So is it useful? Actually, yes. It’s much smaller and easier to use than a tripod. It’s secure and allows you to position the camera in any position you like. 

It saves you from having to bug someone to hold your camera for you, and it’s easier than trying to balance it on a headcover or something.

If you’ve got a friend who loves analyzing their swing on video, this might make an excellent gift as it really is a nice, small substitute for having to haul out and set up a bulky tripod. 

A surprisingly large number of tour players use the SelfieGolf clip because it doesn’t take up much space but does its job rather well.