
If you haven’t heard of the Square Golf Launch Monitor, let me be the first to introduce you to the type of device that is absolutely primed to completely shake up the indoor golf tech industry. Made by the same folks that brought us ExPutt, Square Golf is a bit of a revolution in the indoor launch monitor space thanks to two very specific characteristics: the optical nature of the device and it’s crazy-low price point.
Until now, optical launch monitors were a bit out of reach for many trying to piece together an at-home simulator setup. Sure, incredible devices like the Bushnell Launch Pro, SkyTrak+, and Uneekor Eye Mini are all great examples of optical launch monitors that cost far less than what an equivalent overhead unit would run; but they are far from affordable. Talking about these sorts of units (that measure the ball with optics and infrared, not radar), your conversation stays in the thousands of dollars, not hundreds.
But Square Golf has come along and completely upended this notion. Like the units I mentioned above, it is a ground-based unit, but it’s asking price brings hundreds into the conversation. Specifically, $699 is the price you’ll pay for this device, and from all the videos we’re now beginning to see around the web, that price has nothing to do with it being cheap, inaccurate, or non-trustrworthy.
In fact, it seems the exact opposite is true, and the Square Golf launch monitor (after some timely updates) can be found going toe-to-toe with major players in the space like the Bushnell Launch Pro. That unit – widely understood to be one of the most accurate launch monitors you can buy – runs about 7x the price of the Square Golf launch monitor and comes with a costly $500/year subscription.
The Square Golf launch monitor, on the other hand, requires no subscriptions to use fully (that means ball and club data with stickers) out of the box and no additional fees to use it with 3rd-party software like GS Pro, E6 APEX and Awesome Golf Simulator. And from the looks of many videos out on the web, I’m sold on the accuracy you get out of this little unit as well.
Prior to this device, if you wanted a launch monitor for a home setup, you were forced to go with a Doppler-based radar system like the Garmin R10 or Rapsodo MLM2Pro. While those are fine launch monitors for their prices, a similarly-priced optical unit with measured spin spin (thanks to high-speed and infrared cameras) is always going to win indoors when it comes to accuracy and ease of setup. The problem is, there’s never been a similarly-priced optical unit until the Square Golf Launch Monitor showed up, and that’s precisely why it’s a disruptor.
The one to get for your home setup
I had a friend reach out the other day asking about the Rapsodo MLM, MLM2Pro, Garmin R10 and an older, used gen-1 SkyTrak for his home setup. And without skipping a beat, I asked if he’d heard of the Square Golf Launch Monitor. After showing him just a bit about it, there was no question what the best choice is for a simple, low-cost, accurate golf simulator setup for your home.
Square Golf has introduced (and already updated multiple times) a device that will fundamentally change the way we all approach home golf simulation. You could be hitting into a net, using a full enclosure, or anything in-between: the Square Golf launch monitor will work with just about any setup because it doesn’t need 10 feet of space on either side of the ball. Instead, just a few feet of ball flight will do, and that makes it incredibly flexible for all sorts of setups.
With it’s crazy-low price, more and more golfers are going to hop on the launch monitor/simulator train, and we’re super excited for that. I firmly believe we could see a massive swath of home simulator golfers connecting with other golfers via launch monitors and software unlike anything we’ve seen before because of hardware like the Square. It’s a game-changer for sure, and if you’ve been thinking about getting a setup together to play and practice at home, there’s simply never been a better time and never been a better device to do it with.