New Review of ES Tour Plus from an 7 handicapper

[TinkReloaded]

I felt compelled to write a review of my own based on some of the negative things I've seen and read on the web regarding the ES Tour Plus Launch Monitor:
I had considered building a golf studio in my house/garage for several years to help improve my game and give me something to prevent the "rust" from forming over the winter months in central MN. My first experience with an Ernest Sports Product (ES 16) was at my club pros indoor studio when I was being fitted for my irons and 3 wood. I also had a couple of lessons once the clubs arrived to be able to hit them prior to a winter vacation to Florida. All of those experiences were positive, with seldom non-reads. Most of the shots were spot on with what I felt when I struck the ball. Thin shots on the monitor felt thin, fat shots felt fat and didn't provide club data (which Joe Wisocki told me was the case on those types of shots). Upon making the decision to build the studio in my garage, I took Joe's recommendation to purchase the updated version of the ES Tour Plus and use that as my launch monitor. Having had the machine now for several months I can say only positive things about it. My short irons have all become more accurate and I know, with confidence, how far each of them travel on carry distance and total distance on a full swing shot, and I've been able to get even more accurate with the less than full shots. The obvious part that is beneficial from having a device like this is more repetition without having to go to the course, but for me it's the data to be able to analyze after each session through the ES Golf app. All of the analytics I've been able to do has helped me to improve short iron game greatly, I'm hitting more greens in regulation due to fewer miss-hits either from a directional standpoint or distance and I'm hitting more fairways as a result of repetition of hitting the driver in the studio as well; additionally my misses are seldom way off line like they have been in the past. For me, and I imagine many people like me, knowledge=confidence and confidence=better golf!

In addition to the reliability of the device itself, the customer service I've received from the staff at Ernest Sports, most of which has been through Travis Hancuff, has been outstanding. He has helped me through the setup and calibration process and is always a phone call away if I have questions, which have been few due to the user friendly nature of their product.

To anyone considering building a simulator/indoor practice studio, I'd recommend the ES Tour Plus as an affordable option that has all the benefits of a higher priced launch monitor to help you practice more and enjoy the game more when you have the opportunity to play on a live course.

[02bluesuperroo]

Would love to see a video of the unit in action with you calling your shots and attempting to execute them and see how the unit performs in reality. I've been thinking of buying one but with the reputation of the original ES16 and some other reports on this site with issues getting TGC 2019 going with it, I've remained reluctant. I reached out to their "info" email listed on their site about how I could demo a unit but they didn't reply.

EDIT: I see it was you who reported the issue with TGC 2019 but you resolved it by replacing your mobo

[TinkReloaded]

I don't have much for recording equipment beyond my phone but I'll see what I can put together in the next week or so and post a YouTube link here.
in terms of the golf club software, it worked pretty well with a few chipping miss reads, but I believe that was user error in terms of not changing club selection (software picked an 8 iron and I used a 54° wedge and the bah was sent out 75 yards), un choosing the correct club, it worked well. In truth I've only played one 18 hole round since getting my computer back up and running. Most of what I've been doing is using the range software for data gathering and extra practice time, having two young children my actual okay time has significantly reduced in the last 2+ years.
Again, I'll do what I can and post a link here as soon as possible.

[3on3putt]

Club selection should have nothing to do with the result of the shot. The launch monitor should be reading whatever the ball does. In TGC, it doesn't matter what club you have selected. Ball data is ball data.

[Jon]

Club selection indicates wether the unit is going to use Doppler or photometric.
Dr-9i use Doppler
Pw-Lw use photometric

[Jwheels9876]

Their first happy customer, congrats !

[wbond]

There’s always one. Problem is it sounds like it’s still not actually reading ball data if he’s getting different outcomes depending upon Club selected. At least that’s how I understood what he wrote.

[Jwheels9876]

Yeah, any system you have to select the club to get the right distance is no good in my book lol

[wbond]

Funny, looks like another person posted today on the other thread about it’s inaccuracies which is way more inline with everything that has been posted about this company. A lot of money wasted to not get what you would expect.

[TinkReloaded]

Gents, to further explain, the 'issue' was exclusively when using The Golf Club software. Granted this is a simulator forum, but most of what I use the machine for is practice to get distances dialed in for, live outdoor golf. I'm sure I'll do more simulation this winter when my course is buried in snow, but for now, I've had good results taking the data I've compiled and applying it to my actual rounds on the course.

[TinkReloaded]

Hi fellas, another check in. So, apparently I'm simply not as adequate at hitting shots on demand as I thought I was. On Monday evening I went out to the garage and set up my phone to record some shots as an example for all of you and was able to hit my typical high cuts and knock down draws that I'm pretty confident in, but unable to hit a regular draw our stinger cut when I tried. There were a few cut swings that went straight on the screen that I thought felt different, but I don't have anything to compare the results to.
I then went to the course and tried to do the same thing on the range and had similar results to my garage time. If you want me to simply record a practice session and edit it down showing the results, I can but that might not be what you're looking for.

[DS12]

Do you have a covered range that you could take the ES Tour Plus to and get the shot tracking app that can then compare to the ES app ball flight?

[TinkReloaded]

Unfortunately no. Interesting thought though, I'll try to set up a shady area the next time I'm out there and see what I can come up with. What shot tracking app would you recommend for an android user?

[Jon]

shocking that such a glowing review comes from someone with a total of 11 posts on the forum. Hmmm, I wonder what that means.

[BrewsLee]

I just ordered my unit yesterday. I will share my experience as well. One thing I will say however is the customer service so far has been very good and as an added bonus, a human answered the phone and I did not have to go through a bunch of options to find one. I got in on the $100 off deal for labor day so it was $2640 shipped, I did ask questions on issues I have read online and it sounds like setup is key. One issue that seemed common about practice swings setting off the cameras the just recently patched according to them. Sounds like it was a very easy fix by their engineer. Once I get the unit I can say for sure if it works for me.

[Chuck]

I order one too! It looks like it will work well with my current setup. I just received a notice that it shipped. Super excited to give it First Swing!

[Chuck]

Mine arrived late Friday afternoon. Spent a few hours trying to arrange the space to fit my swing requirements and the flight space needs of the device. I downloaded the ES range software, connected it by Bluetooth to the tour plus, and took a few swings. It worked. Spent Saturday calibrating the tour plus, and then spent most of Sat on the range software, tweaking the environment, and testing different balls. I was really hitting erratically and I think the unit is kind of intimidating being so close to the ball 1ft (Jay mentioned the same thing). My swing mat is one of those thick 'It holds a tee'-type and has the cut out for an Optishot which is where I have the ES tour 'sweet' spot lined up too. This makes divots unnatural feeling. This morning I set up an E6 Connect demo mode. That is a great play. Everything worked well. I had some issues with sand wedge shots but that may be just a matter of learning (and terrain penalties being enabled). Putting was surprisingly good. I should see if I can roll out the EXPUTT mat, lineup the sweet spot, and compare. It does look like ES Tour plus, plays with the Trugolf algorithms and so all the effects work, like terrain penalties, wind, and elevation. So I finished 9 holes on Aviara (+9) and chipping was the only thing that needs real work IMHO, but note... I'm awful with SW anyway, my worst club. First impression grade: A. Now to order a bunch of used Srixon balls.

[BrewsLee]

I still haven't received any shipping info for mine. I sent them another email this morning. Hopefully I hear back.

[BrewsLee]

So.. a couple weeks late but my unit finally arrived!

First off, calibration was pretty simple. The calibration sheet itself comes rolled up instead of flat so plan on wrestling with that for your initial setup.

Pairing my ipad with the device was pretty simple however the user interface is not intuitive as to whether it is connected or not because a tiny icon turns green but the device selection list doesn't show any devices connected. After a few minutes of being annoyed I just hit a shot and it did register.

As far as misreads and no reads I ended up with about 10 no reads out of the 100 or so shots I took but admittedly a few of those were not hit great. The monitor works well enough from what I can tell but I am no pro and can definitively say if my shot should have faded or drew.

The main issue I have with the setup is the ES Golf app itself. Seems like when the pulled the ES16 unit for flaws they should have spent some more time on the app as well because it is pretty riddled with flaws and bugs.

Flaw 1: I thought it was going to show ball flight similar to skytrack but all you get is the the line drawn on the screen that simulates the flight. Not the end of the world but disappointing if you were expecting any form of graphics.

Flaw 2: You cannot customize your bag. The default clubs laid out are not editable so if you are like me and and 3 wedges below your PW and GW, you are going to have to get creative on how your log that club. i.e. I run a 56, 52, 48, GW, and PW since my irons are lofted soo strong. Seems like a lot of people are doing this like me since all the new clubs are lofted much stronger.

Flaw 3: It does not store you general club averages or map your bag. It will save session data but you will have to name a session a club or something to be able to easily find your history.

Flaw 4: If you want to create an at a glance view of your club distances like me you will probably have to utilize the export to CSV functions to create your own log. The problem is the export does not work on iPAD. You have to use a pc. I did call support on this one and it worked for him after quite a while but still has yet to work for me. It does work for me on the PC version though,

Flaw 4B: In the CSV file, there are headers which is nice. However no matter what unit of measure you have selected in the app, the headers in the file read meters but it looks to me like the data is actually in feet and yards which is what I want so as long as I know it is just bad headers I can live with that.

Flaw 5: Seems to lose connection with Ipad every now and then and you need to restart the app to reconnect.

Flaw 6: You cannot delete sessions. Not sure why but your session list will continue to grow and grow which leads to my last complaint.

Flaw 7: Your session data is not cloud based. You cannot see your sessions switching between PC and IPAD. The data is stored locally on each device. Which means... the only way to free up disc space of all your session data is to uninstall the app and reinstall but then you lose ALL your data.

To give them some credit, I will end with the good.

Good 1: They answer their phone!

Good 2: If you simply want a device to see ball flight and distances without any sort of running improvement log, this unit is ok so far.

Good 3: Club compare is kinda cool and that seems to work. Not just for comparing clubs but if you test a change in your swing then you can name it as such and compare results.

Overall, I can work with the hand I was dealt I think and be ok with it. If I had a time machine would I have picked Skytrak over this.... Had I know 3 to 7 day shipping was going to turn into 3 weeks I would been 30% of the wait time for a Skytrak in soo... probably? I justified this purchase because not needing the pay for the game improvement annual fee to skytrak but for the functionality you get with that and the lower price of the Skytrak itself Skytrak may have been a better call. I hope to report back that I change my mind and end up losing the ES Tour Plus but for now my mind set is.. I can live with it and will do some manually entry work to track my data.

Again, this is my initial impression of the ES Tour Plus system with ES Golf App. I have no way to determine accuracy of the device as far as metrics go but the numbers seem reasonable enough for me, Hopefully Golf Simulator Videos guy can comment more on device accuracy in the future.

[sbaart]

I am seeing a similar issue with shipping. I ordered mine a few days after you did(on the 11th), was quoted 7-10 days. Latest response said they were getting in some cases next week so no telling when I will get it.

[Chuck]

tt certainly is an interesting device, I will say. I also found the drive range kind of weak compared to others. It's not bad just you wish it had more. Just download the E6 demo, setup, get an account, and you can get much nicer practice during the demo period. I'm working right now on several issues but my biggest was I could not get chipping or sand wedges to register. I think I found the cause of that issue; I had 3" rubber tee about six inches from the club-side bottom radar window and a metal ladder I use to adjust my projector folded up about 6ft away in the radar view. So like Mevo+ I suspect, you really need to be aware objects in the radar view(s). Once I had both out of the way, wedges and chipping were fine and I never a miss afterword. Also, it seems to favor a shorter tee (for my swing does at least), and when I shortened the tee I noticed not only was I hitting a drive better and getting better numbers, it was more in line with what I hit on the course.

I think most issues could be solved by simply providing the end-user with some diagnostic imaging from the camera and radar's POV, so during setup, you can see what in the environment could be troublesome. It could resolve so many questions, like how does the screen appear to the radar, (too close, too far), are there objects that reflect and obstruct the radar, (like a metal step ladder), or how does the logo look to the IR stereo cameras. Additionally, there is apparently a microphone trigger, can we adjust the sensitivity or know how much noise an SW makes brushing my Ultimat2 vs carpet. That kind of basic info could help a lot.

If you've not done the firmware update, do try that. Just go to the pulldown Bluetooth dialog box and if an update is available, it will have a message in the 'connected' box. It didn't resolve everything but it seems to have helped.

Good luck with your unit. Maybe we can meet up on Discord or something.

[Chuck]

Just an additional followup on wedge shots and chipping. I had miss-after-miss-after-miss with my wedge play, and then I recalled it being said the ES Tour has an acoustic trigger for the high-speed IR optical. So instead of aiming to the bottom of the ball with a wedge on a noisy 'Fiberbuilt' mat, I hit the ball about 1/4 inch higher and perfect chip. Rinse and repeat. It looks like the window for the acoustic trigger isn't large enough or the acoustic model is simply a threshold when it should be looking for an impulse. BTW this is all to reduce the amount of memory a highspeed optical camera will use to capture stereo pairs image used to calculate ball spin. I'm not a fan of acoustics.