Garmin Approach S70: £529.99, tournament mode for the medal, and what British owners say

A golf watch at a little over five hundred pounds has to earn its place on a wet Tuesday in November as much as on a July medal day. Garmin’s Approach S70 has been the top of the company’s golf range since May 2023 and, in September 2026, it still is: no successor has been announced, British retailers are discounting it, and the owners who talk about it in public have firm views on what it does well and what still annoys them.

This page describes the watch, sets out Garmin’s own figures, gives the prices at British shops this month and gathers what golfers say about it, for and against. It is a presentation, not a test: nobody here has worn one round a course.

What the S70 is, and who it suits

It is a full Garmin smartwatch with a golf GPS built in. On the course you get a colour map of each hole, front, middle and back of the green, carries to bunkers and water, and a touch target that gives the distance in yards to any point you tap. Off the course it tracks sleep, heart rate and workouts, stores music and pays at the till.

There are two cases. The 47 mm has the bigger screen and the longer battery; the 42 mm is lighter and sits better on a slim wrist. British shops list the 47 mm in black and the 42 mm in white or grey.

The natural owner is a club golfer who wants one device for the course and the rest of the week, and who will look at the round data afterwards. If a yardage to the middle of the green is all you need, it is a lot of watch for a simple job.

Garmin’s published specification

Everything below comes from Garmin’s product pages for the two sizes. None of it was measured by us.

• Screen: AMOLED touchscreen, optional always-on. 1.4 inches, 454 x 454 pixels on the 47 mm; 1.2 inches, 390 x 390 pixels on the 42 mm. Gorilla Glass 3, ceramic bezel.
• Dimensions: 47 x 47 x 13.4 mm and 56 g, or 42 x 42 x 12.6 mm and 44 g.
• Battery: up to 16 days as a smartwatch and 20 hours with GPS on the 47 mm; 10 days and 15 hours on the 42 mm. The charging cable uses Garmin’s own connector at the watch end.
• Courses: over 43,000 preloaded, updated automatically.
• Sensors: multi-band GPS with GLONASS and Galileo, barometric altimeter, compass, optical heart rate.
• Golf tools: Virtual Caddie club suggestions with shot dispersion, PlaysLike distance, wind speed and direction through the phone app, PinPointer for blind holes, Green View with manual pin placement, AutoShot shot detection, digital scorecard, tempo training and a tournament mode.
• Water rating: 5 ATM.

Two footnotes matter. Garmin states that putts are not tracked automatically and that chips round the green may be missed; its answer is the separate CT10 club sensors. And the green contour maps, which show the slope on selected greens, need a paid Garmin Golf membership on top of the watch.

What it costs in Britain this month

A large British golf retailer listed the Approach S70 47 mm at £529.99 in September 2026, against a manufacturer’s recommended price of £549.99. An online golf specialist had the same model at £519, and Garmin’s own UK store was showing £519.99 in its birthday sale. Discounts at this level come and go, so plan on the recommended price and treat anything below it as a bonus.

Remember the extras when comparing it with a laser: the membership if you want green slopes, and the CT10 sensors if you want putts counted without entering them by hand.

Is it about to be replaced?

Nothing is confirmed. On 7 September 2026 the Garmin Rumors site reported that an Approach S72 is expected in 43 mm and 47 mm sizes, reasoning from the S70’s age rather than from a leaked specification. It is worth knowing before you pay, and it is not a reason to believe a new model is weeks away.

What golfers are saying

What follows is gathered from published reviews and from owners’ posts on Garmin’s public forum and in review comment sections. These are the points that keep returning, not a tally.

Praised again and again

• A screen you can read in a glance. The AMOLED display and the more detailed hole maps, with trees and penalty areas drawn in, are the headline compliment. MyGolfSpy’s review called the screen the biggest change from the S62.
• Battery that copes. Owners who worried the bright display would need charging every evening report a week or more between charges, rounds included.
• Light enough to ignore in the swing. Even golfers who had never worn a watch say they stopped noticing it, as GOLF.com’s hands-on piece describes with the 47 mm.
• Scoring without effort. The prompt to keep score and the buzz as you leave each green are credited with actually getting people to record their rounds.

Criticised again and again

• A subscription for green slopes. The complaint that angers readers most: a premium watch that still charges monthly or yearly for contour data.
• An app that trails the watch. Owners on Garmin’s forum say the statistics feel basic beside Shot Scope and Arccos, with no strokes gained, and some describe lost putting history after app faults.
• Updates that lose rounds. Threads after recent firmware releases describe rounds that did not record or would not save, and fixes that took months.
• Tiny figures on the map. Golfers who play in distance glasses find the yardages on the hole view, white on green, too small, and have asked for a larger text option.
• Putts and short shots. Without the sensors, putts are typed in and some chips go unrecorded.

Where to buy it in the UK, and what to check first

Several British retailers list the 47 mm, and Garmin sells direct. If you can, put both case sizes on your wrist in a shop before ordering: the difference in screen and weight is easier to judge on the arm than on a specification sheet.

British golf raises three practical questions. First, the weather: Garmin rates the watch to 5 ATM, so a wet round is not a risk to it. Second, winter: in the months when you play less, the everyday smartwatch battery matters more than the GPS figure, and that is where the two sizes differ most, 16 days against 10. Third, competitions. Under the Rules of Golf, as published by The R&A, distance measuring devices are allowed unless the committee bans them by Local Rule, but not functions that measure elevation changes or wind. Switch on tournament mode before a club medal or county event, and check in Garmin’s manual which functions it turns off.

If you already carry a laser for pin distances, the S70 adds carries, layups and a score record rather than replacing it. Our guide to rangefinders and golf GPS in 2026 compares the British prices for both.

Who should buy one, and who should not

It makes sense if you want an everyday watch with the best golf screen Garmin sells, play most weeks, and accept a subscription for green slopes. It makes less sense if you only want yardages, which cheaper watches and lasers give you, or if detailed statistics are the goal, because the app is where the consistent complaints are.

Alternatives worth a look

• Garmin Approach S50 and S44. Garmin’s newer, smaller AMOLED golf watches. The S50 adds PlaysLike distance and health tracking; the S44 keeps the essentials. Both cost far less than the S70.
• A Garmin fenix or epix. Replies on Garmin’s forum point out that several of its AMOLED outdoor watches carry the same golf features, which suits a walker or runner.
• A laser rangefinder. Exact flag distance, no charging, no subscription, no scorecard.

How this page was put together

This is a presentation and a reading of public opinion, not a test. Specifications come from Garmin’s published product pages for both sizes. Prices were read at American Golf, The Golf Shop Online and Garmin’s UK store in September 2026, in pounds. The successor report is from Garmin Rumors. Owners’ views were read in the published reviews by MyGolfSpy and GOLF.com, their comment sections and the Approach S70 section of Garmin’s public forum, all in English; nobody is quoted by name, nothing is counted, and no impression is presented as a statistic.

Nobody here has worn or used this watch. There is no commercial link on this page, no affiliate arrangement and no commission. If content on this site is ever paid for by a brand, it will carry an advertising notice at the top of the page, before the first line.