The first day I turned it on, I tested it in the city, which I live in. I was very disappointed. It could only find five satellites. Even when I waited for 8-10 minutes in the same spot. No buildings are taller than five stories high in the neighborhood. I was trying to imagine a small par 4 down the street and the gauging it gave me was pretty incorrect. The Sonocaddie needs at least 6 satellites or more to give precise distance recordings - the more satellites the better and more precise GPS measurements it will provide.
It can receive up to 12 satellites. The more satellites a Golf GPS "communicates" with the more precise it will be and the faster it will be able to record and deliver distance information out on the course.
In theory rain and clouds should not reduce the GPS signal between a Golf GPS device, such as the Sonocaddie. However, I must say that my experience with the Sonocaddie is that it will not find as many satellites in inclement weather, as it does when the sky is clear.
Because of my first test - I arrived at the golf course with less than high hopes.
Within 15 minutes it had found 12 satellites and communicated with 11 of them - so my expectations were positive as I went to the first tee.
I started mapping the course to learn how to do it. The course I was playing that day was available on the Sonocaddie website for download, but I wanted to learn it the hard way.
I had mapped the different bunkers, water hazards, lay ups and stuff like that as reference points before I arrived to the golf course. This way mapping the course will go a bit faster, because you simply have to enter each hole and edit each reference point for each hole (you can map up to 6 different reference point pr. hole, of which 2 is the front green and back green) and make sure to stand still for at least 5 seconds on each reference point to obtain a precise GPS recording for that particular reference point.
It took me about 1 hour extra playing 18 holes, because I had to jump around and find all the hazards and lay up points, but when it's done, it's done - and you KNOW you've done it yourself - and this is a pretty satisfying thought.
The unit is pretty sturdy, although in white plastic. You have a nice black small thin rubber belt around the lower half of the unit, and this makes it very easy to get a tight and firm grip on the the unit. The display is readable in direct sunligt, but of course it's only a monochrome display and not as fancy as the Sureshot GPS with its TFT color-screen. But the Sonocaddies screen works for its purpose and that's enough for me. The electronic scorecard also works very well. You can go directly from the GPS mode on each hole to the electronic scorecard and back again in the press of one button. Works really well.
The device is small and light weight at 4 ounces with the 3 AAA batteries. even smaller than a normal sized cellular phone. Think of Samsung clamshell phone-size. You can have it in your pocket and still not notice it. Other GPS devices are considerable larger and bulkier. I like being able to always have it on me and not sitting on my golf cart, because I also use the electronic scorecard built into the Sonocaddie.
You can use rechargeable batteries and they work very well. I use 3 GP 850 maH AAA - and after 3 rounds, I still have 2 out of 4 power beams on the display. The menu is fast and easy to learn. The keyboard and joystick are much better than expected - actually very easy to use and navigate with. One negative thing is that the unit has trouble saving the settings. Sometimes it will remember the settings you save, sometimes it will forget them. I had to set the settings for meters instead of yards several times, but the unit kept forgetting them. A firm ware upgrade should correct this small but annoying error.
After mapping the course, I've tested the Sonocaddie two times on the same course - and so far I'm content. The distances seem to be spot on (within 2-3 yards/meters precision - NO GPS unit is more precise than that) , the unit had 9-11 satellites to communicate with on each round, which is more than enough.
The software you need to install on your Pc for the Sonocaddie to work on the computer was easy to install and the downloading of courses was very easy as-well. You can have a total of 20 courses saved in the Sonocaddie - and it's free of charge. No annual fee, no price for downloading the courses from the Sonocaddie website, which I think is a great feature.
Improvement for the next model could be: Built in clock, a slightly larger screen (without making the unit larger, because I really love the small size of this device) and an alarm clock (a discreet tee time alarm for use on the range).
Performance: 9/10
Design : 9/10
Bulk: 10/10
Features: 9/10
Screen: 7/10
Power consumption: 9/10
Price: 8/10