18Birdies Golf App Review
The 18Birdies golf app is truly unique in that it offers a high quality golf GPS with social networking, score tracking, and friendly competition features. The premium subscription of the app is even more impressive due to features I've not seen in other apps. I've tried a lot of golf GPS apps, but the 18Birdies golf app might be the new leader in the clubhouse.
Scoring & GPS
An argument can be made that all golf GPS apps do the same thing. All track your position on the golf course, most will help you keep score (because writing with a pencil is so 2016), and many will allow you to share your scores on social networks. The 18Bridies golf app breaks through that mold by accomplishing much, much more.
The in-app scoring is easy and intuitive. With just a few taps you can record your score on each hole, your number of putts, sand saves, penalty shots, fairways hit, and greens in regulation. While that may sound like a lot of work, posting all of those stats takes only a few seconds.
The GPS is also incredibly accurate. You can pinpoint your location on the app's interface by dragging your finger across your smartphone's screen, allowing you instant yardages to hazards, doglegs, trees, and any part of the green.
Yardages to the front, center, and back of each green is also dead-on, making 18Birdies one of the best virtual caddies you will find.
The most impressive features of the premium app, however, were the wind, humidity, and elevation stats for every shot. Yardages were actually adjusted based on these stats throughout the round, completely blowing my mind. I've never seen this in a golf GPS app.
Club Profile and Social Networking
18Birdies brings a sense of personalization not seen in any competing app I've ever tried.
Using the Golf Bag feature of the app allows you to record every golf club you have in your bag, by brand make, model, and average yardage. This is insanely useful for the GPS as the app will recommend a club for you based on the distance you need to hit. It also gives you some bragging rights among friends who may have similar golf clubs, but one buddy hits his driver further.
Speaking of friends, the app's social networking features are flawless. You can add "friends" like any popular social network, share golf scores and individual shots, comment on what's shared, and much more. You can even watch a friend's round in real time and offer your... um... encouragement via the comment feature.
Shot Tracking, Tournaments and Games
The super cool 18Birdies Caddy+ feature is another gamechanger that will make your jaw drop. As mentioned, not only will it recommend clubs based on your personal yardage averages, it also allows you to record an individual shot via the GPS+ feature.
Let's say you pipe the drive of your life down the middle of the fairway and you want to gloat to your friends sitting at home. Switch on the shot tracker, drive (or walk, you lazy bum) to your golf ball, and turn off the tracker. You now have the total distance your drive traveled, which you can later showcase to your jealous buddies.
Finally, 18Birdies also features a number of side games like Nassau, Dots, Skins, Vegas, Rolling Strokes, and Match Play makes your weekend foursome game easier to track.
Overall Impression
Wow.
If it's not obvious by now, I was incredibly impressed with everything 18Birdies has to offer. I expected more of the same and was proven wrong many times over.
All features considered, and despite needing to pay for all the fancy bells and whistles, 18Birdies is hands down the best golf GPS app you can download. Nothing comes close.
