The £12 Golf Laser Range Finder...Tested!

In this video, Neil Tappin tests his premium Bushnell range finder up against a £12 one bought from Amazon

The £12 Golf Laser Range Finder...Tested!

In this day-and-age, nearly ever golfer has a range finder, whether that be a laser or a GPS, so in this video we wanted to test whether you need to pay top dollar for the big-name brands or if you can get good performance from the bargain bucket.

GM's Neil Tappin tested his own Bushnell Tour V4 laser (currently available for around £270) up against the £12.36 Sodial 7x digital range finder from Amazon.

The Sodial is incredibly cheap, but does it work?

Watch the video for our full test and results.

Here's what Neil thought -

- It has offered me accurate yardages...some of the time

- You're going to have to be able to be incredibly good at operating it because it doesn't just pick out the flag, you need to manually line up the green and flag

- It's lightweight and the case it comes with is great

- I think this is usable if you have a fairly good idea of the yardage before you start, ie you have sprinkler heads or yardage posts

- When you don't have that original information, I'm not sure I'd be 100% confident using the info from the Sodial

- There were some issues, perhaps the biggest issue is that you need the steadiest of hands to operate. You need to be able to measure up the green at the bottom with the flag up to the top and that's tricky to do with a 7x magnification

- I found myself going for a second opinion with the Bushnell on more than one occasion

- It takes a long time to get a yardage and fiddly, it takes significantly longer to get a yardage than the Bushnell

- We only found it useful for getting a yardage to the pin, not to bunkers and trees etc. which is something that the Bushnell and other premium devices can easily do

- With such a huge price differential between the two, the Sodial will offer you decent yardages but this test has confirmed to us just how good the premium devices are as they are faster, easier to use and more accurate

- When it comes to range finders...you get what you pay for

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