I've had the G6 for some 10-11 weeks now, and I can honestly say that it's a great training aid.
I was a 30 handicap golfer when I got it, and play to 24.8 today (not saying that this couldn't have happened without the watch - but still worth a mention
)
It does work though.
It's setup and calibrated through the PC and takes into consideration your arms length as well as the length of each of your
clubs.
In practice mode, you start by telling the watch which club you're hitting, and then go ahead and hit some balls.
The watch then tells you - for each shot - your Tempo (the total time of your swing) - your Rhythm (the percentage of the total swing spent on the downswing) - the length of your backswing (in degrees of the circular arc that your hands move in) - and your clubhead speed.
I took it to my pro and he helped me do the final calibration using a launch monitor.
When properly calibrated, the deviation between the watch and the launch monitor was less than 2% for the woods and just about 1% for the
irons.
The measurements of the watch was consistently lower than those of the launch monitor, and did not fluctuate very much.
By 'cheating' with the length of the
irons registered in the watch, we would probably have been able to get very close to correct speeds, but I settled for having consistency and a deviation of less than 2%. After all, the feature will mainly be used with range balls which will likely cause larger deviation than the watch does.
The watch has 5 modes:
1) Time (well ... it's a watch - nothing too fancy there)
2) Game (Electronic Scorecard. Very simple and intuitive to use. Keeps track of fairways hit, greens in regulation, penalties, bunkers, sand saves, up and down, out of bounds, putts, score, standings (in matchplay mode) and stableford points (in stableford mode). It can keep track of up to 4 players' scores, and - if you enter the information on the course you're playing and the handicaps of the players - stableford points for all players. Did I mention that it was very easy to use? Well it is. Plus it saves a lot of time when adding up the scores.
3) Practice (as described above - keeps track of Tempo, Rhythm, Backswing and Clubhead speed for 100 shots per session - and keeps track of up to 20 sessions at a time before you have to dump data to the computer. Every shot can be tagged as a 'good' or 'bad' shot ... or not tagged, which can then be used back on the PC to locate your 'hot zone', the intervals where most shots turn out good. Then all that is left is to practice staying inside those intervals.)
4) Test (this is my favorite mode. You hit 10 shots with the same club. It gathers the same data as in Practice mode - Tempo, Rhythm, Backswing and Clubhead speed - but also calculates the deviation between the 10 shots. Since golf is a game of repetition, this mode is brilliant practice. Pick out your 'usual' approach club ... in my case that would be the 9 iron ... and hit EXACTLY the same shot 10 times. If you can do that with very little deviation, then you'll find it a lot easier to get your lenghts right on the course, and that will do wonders to your approach game!)
5) Memory. (Stores course and player information as well as stats and swing logs from Practice, Test and Game sessions for you to review on the spot - which makes data usable even without your PC).
Yeah ... I like it. I'd say it's well worth the money.
Add to all of the above features, that it has a large motivational quality as well. It's fun to go practice, and that'll lure you to the range more often. Once there, it gives you structured practice at the range, as opposed to just 'hitting balls'.
It's good stuff!