Going to the range is fundamental to improving your game, but I don’t always love the experience. If you’re impatient like me, it’s easy to overdo it, which messes with your swing and nullifies the whole point. I wasn’t sure how much Garmin’s pint-size launch monitor could help, but one trip to the range and I was sold. Pairing it to my phone took seconds, and once I figured out the basics of the app, I was swinging away in no time. The device tracks your ball automatically and (mostly) accurately, even in twilight. You can set it to take a video of each swing and the included phone mount makes it easy to monitor each shot and adjust your camera angle.
The real fun comes with the virtual games, which provide a mobile simulator experience reminiscent of Top Golf, if more limited (and without the doughnut holes). The free service is fun, but avid players will want the subscription to unlock thousands of virtual courses and store videos in the cloud. You can even expand to a projection-based simulator with third-party apps such as Awesome Golf. Like the game itself, the R10 isn’t a cheap enterprise, and its micro USB charging port is archaic and takes forever. Otherwise, this little kickstand is a killer add-on for a virtual on-course experience that makes practice nearly as fun as the real thing.