OptiShot Golf Simulator: Editor Review (2024)

Pros: OptiShot is simple to install, set up and use. It’s also extremely portable. And because it can be used with a golf ball, foam ball or no ball, it can make just about any space where you can swing a club a golf space. Its infrared sensors are also pretty accurate when it comes to measuring clubhead speed and point of contact on the face (heel, center, toe), and short game shots and putting were more intuitive than we expected. Visually, the course layouts are attractive, as are the sounds of the birds and birdie claps.

Cons: OptiShot couldn’t read my driver swings and gave distorted results with my 3 wood swings. While its settingsallowed me to designate my longest iron to go a “driver distance,” not being able to pull the big stick was a disappointment. With irons and wedges the readings were in the right range most of the time. But here and there, OptiShot would fail to read a shot or give a result that I knew was way off.

The Takeaway: OptiShot is not a launch monitor, so it doesn’t track the ball — its infrared sensors track the club slightly before and after impact. So if a user is expecting a FlightScope- or Trackman-like experience (launch monitors that can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000), they’re not going to get it from something that costs $399. But if users understand what OptiShot does and its limitations, it can be an enjoyable experience.

It’sgreat fun for golfers who want a golf-like experience in the winter, at night or on bad weather days, and birdies still feel like birdies. But for really serious golfers, it will probably serve as an arcade or party game, not an improvement tool.

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Overview

At $399, OptiShot isa fraction of the cost of most launch monitors — it’s also aboutthe cheapest golf simulator on the market that provides an actual golf experience.Almost every option can be customized, including weather, course conditions and equipment options. Even golfers like me who have actually played the real versions of some of OptiShot’s courses will find themselves immersed into their simulated rounds at one of OptiShot’s 11 free replica courses, including Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines (North and South). For an additional $49.95, golfers can add one of OptiShot’s 14 premium replica courses, which include Pebble Beach, Whistling Straits, St. Andrews, TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course and others.

For many recreational golfers, especially those in cold climates, OptiShot will be a godsend. It’s two rows of infrared sensors fire about 10,000 pulses per second and bounce off the sole of a golfer’s club slightly before and after impact, measuring clubhead speed, face angle and path. OptiShot’s software takes over from there, extrapolating launch conditions from those variables to give golfers a reasonably accurate on-screeen illustration of what their shot did.

Optishot’s infrared sensors are the launch monitor’s biggest strength, but for serious golfers, they are also its biggest downfall. Since OptiShot is not measuring the ball like other launch monitor systems, it presumes that every shot is hit pretty much on the screws. For this reason, OptiShot doesn’t take into consideration gear effect, the twisting of the club head that occurs on off center hits and contributes to shot shape. That means that every swing on OptiShot has some level of error, but that’s something the company is aware of and doesn’t try to hide.

“We are not a launch monitor, and we don’t pretend to be a launch monitor,” says Brandon Theophilus, CEO of Dancin Dogg, the company behind OptiShot. “Trackman and FlightScope — both of those products are measuring the ball. We’re not. We’re measuring the club face through the impact area.”

Despite the short comings of its infrared sensors, Theophilus, a 3 handicap, says that there’s plenty skilled golfers can learn from OptiShot. Even though OptiShot doesn’t know if he hit a shot fat or thin, he does, and can adjust his expectations accordingly.

Theophilus is right. Golfers of all levels can enjoy OptiShot. Many golfers will even learn from it. But different golfers have different thresholds for how much inaccuracy they can tolerate. For serious golfers, OptiShot will toe that line.

Set up

Setting up OptiShot is a breeze. The $399 package includes a 14-by-10-inch swing pad, replaceable turf, the OptiShot software, a 10-foot USB cable, two foam practice balls and well-fitting tees. Add a PC with Windows Vista, 7 or 8, and that’s all that’s needed to start using OptiShot.

Setup goes something like this — insert the disc and plug in the swing pad. That’s about it. Golfers will need a place where they can swing a club, but based on their preference, they may not even need a net. OptiShot can be played without a ball, which means golfers can make air swings over the unit’s infrared sensors and still play and practice golf.

This feature came in particularly handy for me, as the GolfWRX hitting bay isn’t tall enough to safely contain full wedge shots. I used the foam balls on those occasions, which I found to be as accurate as real balls. I also experimented with the “no-ball” option, which wasn’t as accurate for me. Whether that was the OptiShot’s fault or my inability to make a consistent swing without a ball present, I’m not sure.

Ease of Use

It didn’t take me long to get very proficient with OptiShot. There’s a lot of different options available, but the screen stays uncluttered by neatly organizing those options in the four corners. All a golfer really has to do is make sure the swing pad is lined up to the target and that they enter their clubs specifications (loft, offset and length) and they can be on their way to playing some of the world’s best courses with up to three of their friends.

I found the distances my shots flew to be accurate to a range of about 10 yards (compared to FlightScope) most of the time. If for some reason the shots are not flying the proper distances, users can boost their “swing speed percentage” for each club, which will make the ball fly longer or shorter to dial in exact distances.

Short game and putting, the down fall of most simulators, was surprisingly intuitive. It’s a stretch to say the rough and bunkers on OptiShot are similar to real golf, but they provide some resistance to the ball that makes them a penalty in game play. There’s also a putting grid on the green that shows breaks and elevation changes. I didn’t make as many putts as I’m used to on some video games, but if I made a good read and paired it with a good stroke, the ball went in with a slightly higher frequency than the course.

Changing clubs and alignment are done with keyboard arrows, which is fast and convenient, and lie type, distance, elevation change, wind speed, wind direction, club selection and shot trajectory are prominently displayed on the bottom of the screen. There’s also a pop out section on the upper left section of the screen that shows club head speed, face angle, distance, height, tempo and contact, which can help some golfers understand what could have been the cause of a certain type of shot.

Accuracy

OptiShot advertises its accuracy range as being within 2 mph of club head speed, 1.5 degrees of face angle and 1.9 degrees of swing path. For the majority of shots, I found that those tolerances were accurate. But I hit plenty ofsquirrely shots with OptiShot that did not match up with our in-house FlightScope system.

To avoid a possible interference between the OptiShot’s infrared sensors and FlightScope’s Doppler radar field, I ran them separately, hitting 20 six irons on each. Many shots turned out similar, but the range was much wider on OptiShot than it was with FlightScope. OptiShot recorded face angle readings of as much as 10-degrees closed and 8-degrees open, while FlightScope’s range was between 0.5-degrees closed and 2.2 degrees opened — a huge variance.

There was also the issue of OptiShot not being able to pick up any shots hit with my drivers, which is understandable given the nature of its infrared sensors — they need a smooth, predictable surface to give golfers accurate results. I picked the plainest-soled drivers I had in house — Callaway’s X Hot and Cobra’s AMP Cell Pro — neither of which worked. I also went with the simplest-soled 3 wood I had, a Callaway X Hot Pro, which gave me hugely distorted results — 90-degree angle hooks and slices that didn’t match up to my FlightScope sessions.

OptiShot sells its affordable OptiStix driver for $49.95, which the company says works well with the system. But will golfers who spend hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours tuning their driver embrace a system that doesn’t allow them to use it?

Final thoughts

Although the ability to play some of the world’s best golf courses in the dead of winter was extremely satisfying to me in late portion of a brutal Michigan winter, I gravitated to the practice feature, which allowed me to practice certain shots on golf courses over and over. I also liked the range option in practice mode, which allowed me to hit shots at six different targets. There’s even a “par-3 tee” option, which takes any hole and turns it into a par 3 so that it can be played in spaces where users can’t swing longer clubs.

“All of us are trying to do more with less in our lives with respect to golf,” saysTheophilus. “We’re trying to do our part with folks to help them play more golf in a shorter period of time.”

OptiShot certainly is a way for golfers to squeeze more golf into their lives. For golfers like me in cold climates, OptiShot can extend a season by almost half a year. But everyone who’s in the market for a simulator or launch monitor will have to ask themselves a question. Is this thing worth $400?

For golfers who want to play as much golf as possible and are willing to deal with inaccurate readings at times, the answer is yes, and OptiShot will be everything they’ve always hoped for. But if a golfer wants to hit balls with their own driver and get as realistic feedback as possible, they’re better served spending time at an indoor facility or on a Doppler system.