PIQ beat me to it.
In February at the PGA Show I said it was time to write about how awesome it will be when a golf tech company looks beyond its niche and begins to combine multiple functions into one device. You know…kill two birds with one stone.
Turns out PIQ wants to kill three birds; combining a GPS rangefinder, swing analyzer and shot tracker into a single product (think ZEPP meets Game Golf meets Golf Buddy).
Sound interesting? We’re certain it’s exactly what the future of golf wearables looks like, which is why it’s worth your attention right now.
PIQ has already secured $5.5 million in funding, so we’re not talking about a pipedream. We’re talking about a product coming to market that may just convince you to take your stash of cash and go all-in on a pre-order for €269 ($299 USD).
Featuring a GPS and swing analyzer all-in-one that attaches to your glove and pairs with sensors plugged into the butt end of your grips, PIQ will display yardages for front, center and back of the green via an LCD display on the glove mounted GPS (provided through partnership with Mobitee), while simultaneously transmitting swing analysis data to your smart phone for immediate swing feedback…even in the middle of our round round.
Near Field Communication (NFC) sensors installed on the butt of your grips will track each shot during your round, though that will require a tap to your glove mounted GPS instead of automatically sensing swings)
All of this data will be piped to your smart phone via bluetooth allowing you to analyze your best swing, longest drive, distance for each club, and averages for clubs, best score “and other highlights” all setup to be shared via social media/text messaging.
Hey Bob, check out the triple bogey I just made on 12.
The swing analyzer promises to deliver data for swing tempo, club head speed. and swing path. While that probably won’t be enough to claim the title of MyGolfSpy’s Most Wanted Swing Analyzer, it’s considerably more than you get from any other GPS and round tracker currently available.
PIQ is thinking bigger than just golf. Their website suggests their sensor will analyze movements for football (not sure if that’s US or metric), snowboarding, tennis, fencing (you do cross train for fencing right?), boxing, skiing and more.
With all of these features making their way to a single device, it it will be interesting to see if a company like Garmin like will add full swing analysis to its watches (they’ve already added the ability to measure swing tempo), or will Zepp team up with GolfShot to provide GPS and swing analysis into one?
Technology companies are not alone in their pursuit of the perfect golf analysis system. Cobra Golf has patents filed for adding sensors under your grips (seriously, this sounds promising – imagine a swing analyzer and club/shot tracking device in one built directly into each grip), and TaylorMade just announced a partnership with Microsoft that will pair wearable tech with digital shot tracking and analysis.
Will the Apple Watch or Samsung Gear 2 allow these devices to take up even less space and power?
It’s hard to imagine that, moving forward, anyone offering wearable tech will be able to compete unless they can offer more feature-rich products. The larger question to be answered is which pieces will be combined, and will they be implemented in a way that actionable data will be easily accessible and interpretable?
In the meantime, PIQ is slated for release in September, and is available for pre-order now. We’ll definitely let you know our thoughts just as soon as we receive one of the first test units.
If you had to choose what pieces of wearable tech you’d like to see combined into one product, what would they be?
@5Before50
7 years ago
Have been using Game Golf and Zepp Golf now for about 18 months, and all along I have thought to myself that if only one or other company brought out a device which combined both technologies, they would clean up. So it was with great interest that I purchased Piq Golf & Mobitee this Christmas.
First to the down sides of the former two devices, which I had hoped Piq would address, some of which have been touched upon earlier. The Game Golf belt clip is pretty useless and the device falls off frequently; plus out of sight, out of mind, easy to forget to tag before a shot. The club tags themselves are made of rigid plastic and don’t stand up to repeated impact at the bottom of your golf bag. I have had 4 of them break on me, loosing the flimsy piece of semiconductor film therein. A rubber tag (a la Piq) much more robust. Onto Zepp, and the main issue I had with it was just it’s accuracy, especially with clubhead speed; often around 10mph slower than what Trackman was telling me. This then led to me being dubious of the other figures too. The only one I really trusted was tempo, which is the one I was working hardest on and mostly forgot about club plane, hand plane, backswing (rotation) and overall score.
And so Piq. I used it for the first time today on the course. After a little confusion over the orientation of the device, as I didn’t trust the fastening clip to be as reliable as it turned out to be, the device sync’ed with my mobile phone fine, located the course quickly and was ready to go much quicker than Game Golf tends to be. I had no interest in swing stats today, just recording club distances and checking the odd yardage to the middle of the greens. I use a laser, so it was only as another reference point. No beep or vibration when you tag a club, not good as you have to check the device readout to be sure; but it is definitely easier to remember to tag a club as it is right there in front of you all the time. That being said, I still managed to forget several times in the heat of battle.
One minor issue at software level whilst playing, in that the scorecard for my home course was incorrect, as the 5th hole changed to a Par 5 well over a year ago. That being said, there is an option to submit changes and requests. The 6th hole today was out of play due to winter weather, and It was a relatively quick and easy process to click NOT PLAYED on my phone. This was the only time I took the phone out of my bag, as I was trying to access how well it coped without human interference.
After the round is where the real issues began. As others have said, the on-phone app is pretty simplistic and offers very little scope to amend / edit etc. That would be fine, if like Game Golf, the online support is really quite good; but sadly not for Piq, with a beta site still running with no way to edit scores or shots or any other parameter for that matter. Very poor. You also can’t see your Swing data online which is one of the key features?! With regards GPS accuracy, after analysing where the device had recorded the shots, as plotted on the map it provides, again poor; registering a good 15 yards off where I actually tee’ed up at times!
All in all, I am rather disappointed after my first use, and I am sincerely hoping that Piq / Mobitee get their act together regarding GPS accuracy and the online editing / support and stat crunching that Game Golf excels at.