Zepp Golf Review

Hello John,

I just got my Zepp for Father’s Day – completely unexpected. To answer your question, you do not have to hit a button before each shot, Zepp records each swing. You DO need to make sure you have selected the correct club on the app – so, for example, if you tee off with driver and set it for driver you need to open the app and change the club to 6 iron before hitting that shot. It also means that it records EACH swing …. if you take three practice swings Zepp captures them all labeling the practice swing with a little “p” but only on one screen view – if you’re actually looking at the data you won’t know it’s a practice swing. The only time you “push a button” is if you want to *star* a swing. That flags that swing as a star (presumably one that you liked) and it lets you look at the data for all starred shots or just all shots. Here’s a more comprehensive review I wrote for Amazon:

I’m a complete golf addict. I play multiple times each week in all kinds of weather, I maintain more golf magazine subscriptions than the Dentist’s office, and if the lightning is close enough to chase me off the course (which means it’s REALLY close) I might spend the next two hours wandering around Golf Galaxy. I’m carrying a 10 handicap and love to watch golf on television or on the internet. The most important “club” in my bag is my SkyCaddie GPS and I’d been casually considering picking up a skypro (their competing product which attaches to the shaft of your golf club). I’ve previously owned and used the V1 application which enables you to video record your swing and analyze swing plane, body movement, setup position, etc. I’ve also had both lessons with personal instructor video recording my swing both on and off the course, and been a member of a “gym” that focused strictly on golf.

My daughter and her husband gave me a Zepp for Father’s Day. I spent about three hours researching the similarities and differences between Zepp and its major competitors including the Skypro before deciding to keep the Zepp and opening the box. I won’t go into all of that here other than to say that most of them have at least one unique feature that the others don’t and they each do some things better than others.

I read the manual cover-to-cover, downloaded and configured the app to my iPhone 4 (yes, iPhone 4), and watched several YouTube videos while the device was charging. The app did not have my clubs in its database so I entered their specifications manually – not a big deal. Once fully charged we spent an hour or so in the dungeon getting to know each other. I tried swinging a variety of clubs and looking at the immediate feedback. I tried video recording my swings and comparing it to the two pros in the Zepp database. All pretty straight forward. Then we headed to the driving range.

On the driving range Zepp performed extremely well. It was quite easy to select a club, hit some balls, and consider the feedback. I liked the ability to easily *star* a shot that I liked in order to see how its data compared to others. I hit 150 balls and Zepp captured data on each swing as well as some “practice swings”. I paid $14 for the bucket of balls but using Zepp on the driving range cost me an additional $60 that day because I did not set the configuration to only synch the data when connected to wifi so all of that data (about 1 Gig) used the dataplan on my phone (I don’t usually use much data so my wife and I share 300mb – each additional 300mb that is automatically added costs $20). This was MY fault – there’s an easy option to toggle that prevents that from happening – you’ll get the same immediate feedback but the data stays local rather than going to the cloud.

Before that session on the range I had been suffering for the last two weeks with an awful pull-hook off the tee. I’d lost more balls in the last two weeks than I had in the previous six months. A quick look at the data Zepp provided gave me everything that I needed to correct the issue and about halfway through the 150 balls I was back to hitting a predictably high draw and my swing confidence was coming back. This made the $60 data charge well worth it!

The next day I played a round of golf wearing the Zepp. I was looking forward to playing a round then reviewing the data as I replayed the shots in my mind afterward (I told you I’m addicted). Using it on the golf course proved a little more challenging than using it on the driving range. I’m a walker and use a pull cart. Going out as a single I often get paired with riding golfers so keeping up with them does not allow much time to fidget with gadgets. With some practice I’m sure I can get to the point where club selection becomes more natural but keying in the screen saver code on the iPhone, selecting the app, finding the place to select a club, and selecting the club after already having had to determine the pin position, read the GPS, and select the club is just a bit much (in particular in the bright sunlight where I often have to try to shade the phone in order to see it).

Additionally, it records every swing – sometimes I take no practice swing, sometimes I take one practice swing, sometimes I take several practice swings – Zepp records them all. So I ended up with something like 112 recorded swings when I shot a 77 with 31 putts (meaning I actually only hit the ball with a club other than my putter 46 times). Many times I had failed to successfully select a club so it thought I hit driver twice and things like that. This wouldn’t happen if I had plenty of time and my guess is after using it several times I’ll be able to minimize club selection issues. Again, I do like the ability to *Star* a shot on the golf course and I did annotate my scorecard with which shots I “Starred” so I did have some correlation points to the data.

The biggest problem that I found on the course was the Bluetooth connection. The Zepp instructions recommend that you put your iPhone in your right front pocket (left front pocket for left-handers). It’s only when you do that that you get the hip rotation data. I don’t like carrying my iPhone in my pocket when golfing and keep it on my push cart. The distance between the Zepp on my glove and the iPhone in my push cart was frequently too far to maintain a Bluetooth connection so I had to reconnect it (and sometimes recalibrate) before teeing off on the next hole. My wireless headphones have no problem staying connected when my iPhone’s in the basement and I’m on the 2nd floor of my house – it seems like the Zepp should be able to maintain a Bluetooth connection the width of a green away. Having said all of that, I believe through practice I’ll work through a method that will get me where I want to be in terms of data collection in order to be able to “replay” the round and correlate stray or otherwise disappointing shots with the Zepp data and likewise for those perfect shots.

Other random thoughts on the Zepp:

1) You have to know what to do with the data. Zepp tells you, for example, your hand plane is +12% … if you’re not enough of a golf student to know what that means and/or how to correct it you would probably be better served taking a lesson with a pro who video records your swing than buy this device and expect it will help you.
2) I’m disappointed that I can only look at the great data and swing renderings and recordings on the little iPhone screen. I’d love to see Zepp provide a Mac App so I can come home from the range or the round and review the data on my large screen monitor. (I really don’t want an iPad but may have to buy one to get all that this has to offer)
3) I’d love to be able to export the data to an excel spreadsheet or a database to be able to analyze trends – I hope Zepp can put this on their enhancement list.