Garmin Approach S70 vs Voice Caddie T11 Pro: Read Our Full Head-to-Head Verdict

Garmin Approach S70 vs Voice Caddie T11 Pro: Read Our Head-To-Head Verdict

If I take any new piece of golf tech out onto the golf course, it needs to give me some sort of tangible benefit. A golf watch certainly does that, not just for me but plenty of other players out there, offering functions like yardage, wind direction and speed confirmation, shot and putt tracking, hole mapping, and now even green undulation data at the press of a button.

The best golf watches are a cost-effective way of improving your golf game since many of their golf GPS features help you with your course management while standing over the ball. They also give you plenty of performance data to analyze after the round so you know what to work on next, and some golf watches now come with settings that help you on the range too.

While there’s a lot to be said for simplicity when it comes to a good golf watch, the two options I’m comparing today are among the most feature-rich options on the market. The Voice Caddie T11 Pro and the Garmin Approach S70 are absolutely teeming with functions for you to play around with, making them both fantastic options for the golf techie. However, if you’re the sort who thinks less is more and doesn’t want to be overloaded by so many different features, consider looking at the best golf GPS devices or best golf rangefinders instead for more specialized pieces of golf gear.

Styling

While style and design may not be the number one thing you’re looking for in a versatile golf watch, it’s still important since you’re going to be looking at it as it sits on your wrist over and over again throughout your round and, in all likelihood, for a good amount of time before and after playing golf as well.

With that in mind, both of these watches hit the right notes from a design standpoint. The Voice Caddie T11 Pro looks and feels every bit the premium product that it is, and it sat nicely on my wrist even though it’s a little bigger than the Apple Watch I’m used to. This real estate is much needed given the features I’ll cover later, and it’s not anything I’ll begrudge given just how good the casing and screen look.

The Garmin Approach S70 is also a sleek and sporty golf watch, perfectly usable as your all-day smartwatch although it might be just a touch too chunky for the most formal of occasions. It’ll fit the bill everywhere else, especially given that you can choose between a 1.2-inch or 1.4-inch AMOLED display, with the smaller size being much better suited for everyday use and the larger version offering excellent resolution to make full use of the S70’s feature list.

The high resolution makes both display options crystal clear, and the graphics on the S70 are a clear, meaningful improvement over its predecessor, the Approach S62. You may have heard that some of Garmin’s lower-priced models have brightness issues, but the S70’s display is vibrant and sharp to show off new features like green contours and updated, higher-detail hole maps.

While I can’t find fault with the S70 in this department, the Voice Caddie T11 Pro’s OLED screen takes things to a whole other level. It’s incredibly bright and clear, and the perfectly responsive touchscreen is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of testing recently. These clear graphics really helped me to make use of the T11 Pro’s different features, and they go hand-in-hand with the way the watch gives you a lot of automatic, at-a-glance info.

Ease Of Use

When you buy a new GPS watch and trot it out onto the course, all you want is to access the course easily, get your round started without any hassle, and find and use all of the features that are most important to you as easily as possible.

Both of these watches get the job done in that regard, but the Voice Caddie T11 Pro offers a surprisingly hands-off experience by automating a lot of functions. Having it zoom in and offer more pertinent detail as you get closer to the hole is a nice touch, and it’s the best way to offer so much complex information.

That’s not to say the Garmin Approach S70 is difficult to use. Far from it, with its three right-side buttons letting you navigate smoothly through its different functions. It’s intuitive despite the seemingly endless number of functions and customization options, and it won’t give up the ghost mid-round either, with up to 20 hours of battery life while using GPS and 16 days in smartwatch mode.

Features

Both of these golf watches really come into their own in this category, so strap in! It’s almost as if these two watches can do everything for you bar actually swing the club. The Garmin Approach S70, for example, can show you the weather forecast and let you integrate that into your round. It’ll also give you accurate yardages to greens, bunkers, and other course features, track your score and shot distances, and even pipe up (if you want it to) during club selection.

The S70 comes preloaded with over 43,000 courses, and when you get to your club, it’ll ready up your course automatically and download it if needed. If you’re not playing in a tournament, you can use the watch for “Plays Like Distance” which accounts for slope, wind, temperature, and even barometric pressure. Once you’ve logged five rounds, the watch can also start making club recommendations for you.

The S70 also brings back Garmin’s 'Pinpointer' compass to show you where the green is on blind shots, and there’s an automatic distance tracker which shows you how far away from your last shot you are - this is priceless when trawling the heavy rough as long as you have an idea of how far you might have hit your last club.

There are even more features available to you if you sign up for a monthly Garmin Golf membership. The highlight of these is green contouring, giving you an idea of the main contours and slope percentages of each green on the course. Subtle breaks aren’t accounted for, though, so you’ll still need to read your putts yourself.

The S70 has plenty to talk about from a features and functions standpoint, but the Voice Caddie T11 Pro is no slouch either. I really enjoyed its hole mapping, which is about as comprehensive of a course management feature as you’re likely to find, down to the driver distance arc that you can set at your own average drive distance to see what elements of the hole are in play, and the ability to touch spots on the hole to check yardages to, saving me the time and trouble of having to get my rangefinder out.

The T11 Pro’s hole mapping works really well because the watch tracks where you are, and as you make your way down the fairway it keeps adjusting the view of the hole, zooming in to display key info around the green for your approach shot. Voice Caddie’s ‘Smart Approach View’ displays the exact shape of the green and slopes, such as run-offs and false fronts, at play. It also rotates to show your exact position on the hole, meaning that you don’t have to adjust your perspective.

‘Smart Putt View’ kicks in next, and it’s an impressive bit of tech. The watch provides you with all of the critical information related to slope and break on the green, then actually prompts you with a green read like an actual caddie might, saying things like “aim left”, “aim right over a club length”, or “uphill, then flat to the pin”.

While this could be extremely useful for someone who’s poor at reading a green or actively needs that sort of prompt, these suggestions were a step too far for me, and I didn’t want my watch telling me what to do. I did, however, really like the clear color gradient and arrows that gave me an excellent idea of the green’s contours.

The Voice Caddie T11 Pro also features a tempo practice tool for the range, allowing you to practice your swing against a set tempo. While tempo training is definitely a thing, this feature fell short for me because I didn’t know what tempo number to input into the watch and test myself against. If you know what your ideal tempo needs to be, you’ll get more mileage out of this feature than I did.

Versatility

It’s a very good product on the course, but the Garmin Approach S70 would be excellent if you just looked at it as just a smartwatch, too. You can connect it to your smartphone to get all of your usual notifications, whether that’s emails, news alerts, social media pings, credit card charges, or just about anything else, all of it in real time.

Importantly, you can edit those notification settings to trim down what your S70 will funnel through to you. You can also play Bluetooth music or see who’s calling your phone, though you can’t answer calls directly from your watch. Garmin has quite the reputation in the fitness space, and the Approach S70 is a tremendous option as a fitness watch and health tracker too, with a heartbeat monitor, step counter, and a whole lot more.

The Voice Caddie T11 Pro is serviceable as a basic smartwatch, giving you call and text notifications when you connect it to your phone, but that’s about all it can do off the course apart from telling the time. It’s an out-and-out golf watch to be sure, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

Value

For me, the Voice Caddie T11 Pro goes above and beyond in terms of functions, so the value you’ll get from it depends squarely on how much use and enjoyment you’re going to get from those many different features. I really liked its hole mapping feature, and while they weren’t to my taste, you might be a fan of the green reading prompts the watch offers and the tempo training feedback feature, which some smartphone apps charge for. If you don't need all of those features and are instead just looking for a stylish golf watch that also gives you some basic yardage info and not too much more, the price tag may be a little too dear.

The S70 is an extremely versatile smartwatch on top of being a feature-rich golf watch, so if you want the best of both worlds, the Garmin option may be the one worth turning to. It’ll take charge of all your fitness-tracking and health monitoring needs too, so the price can be easily justified as an everyday purchase. Both the Garmin Approach S70 and the Voice Caddy T11 Pro are premium products, however, so if you want a cheaper model, make sure to read our guide on the best value golf watches.

Which Should You Choose?

Choose the Garmin Approach S70 if...
- You want a sleek watch for everyday use
- You also need high-end golf functions
- You’d like to see the effect of weather on your game

Choose the Voice Caddie T11 Pro if...
- You’ll use a lot of its many golf features
- You want great hole mapping and plenty of data
- You need help reading greens