If you’re wanting to find out the Foresight GC3 Hong Kong price, or wanting to but it in Hong Kong, please contact Golf Shop Hong Kong or WhatsApp 9225 7285.

So who is the Foresight GC3 Hong Kong for?  At just over USD$7000, it’s certainly not aimed at just any golfer.  The Foresight GCQuad is used on tour by many of the world’s leading players and has been the gold standard for indoor golf centers focused on club fitting and golf simulation. One major problem with both the GCQuad and the GC3 used in an indoor golf center for game play is that if you are playing with a mix of right and left handed players, you will need to pick up the launch monitor and change positions every time a different handed player hits a shot. This is a huge deal breaker if you’re planning on using either for game play.

If you’re an indoor golf center just doing fitting and letting people practice on it, it’s great and pretty much accepted that the Foresight GC3 or Foresight GCQuad are the best for this purpose. Yes, you can use both with the FSX software, but again, if you’re looking at hiring it out for people to play rounds of golf, this is not the best options. Where the Foresight GC3 Hong Kong shines is in it’s portability. You can easily take this from indoors to the range and set up the app to get very accurate stats. The GC3 doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Quad, but certainly comes close and the accuracy of the 3 cameras (as opposed to 4 cameras on the GCQuad) is comparable to the GCQuad.

If money is not an issue, I guess the few additional data points that the Foresight GCQuad offers is worth going for, but I think most people would be hard pressed to justify spending more than double the amount for the Quad.  We’ll have a full review of the Foresight GC3 Launch Monitor coming soon.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to buy the Foresight GC3 in Hong Kong, please get in touch with Golf Shop Hong Kong who’ll put you onto the best distributor (there are more than one distributor of the GC3 in Hong Kong, and one of them we highly recommend you avoid)

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The first and primary problem is downloading courses. Try downloading either the South, North, or East Course at Kau Sai Chau and see what happens. You’re given a choice of three courses, all named “Kau Sai Chau”, but with no designation as to which course. If you’re like us, the last thing you want to do before teeing off is to be worrying about trying to figure out this kind of stuff. Hong Kong Golf Club isn’t much better. Yes, the Garmin Golf Course database does show Hong Kong Golf Club Old Course and Eden Course, but they then show Hong Kong Golf Club New Course A and Hong Kong Golf Club New Course B. Confusing.

There’s more than 38,000 golf courses worldwide but how many of these have the same flaws and problems as we’ve faced in Hong Kong. The GPS measures layup distances, as well as doglegs, keeps track of what hole you’re on, how many shots you’ve played and it’s even got a round timer. Of course, being an activity tracker, the Garmin VivoActive watches’ built in accelerometer tracks your steps. All this is rendered useless if you don’t know what course to select.

If you’re a weekend hacker or mid to high handicapper the Garmin VivoActive watch will probably do the trick, considering they fix the course names. If you’re a low handicap player who can more often than not hit your irons to 15-20 feet distance wise to the pin, you might be better off going with a dedicated golf rangefinder device, such as the Leupold 4xi2, which we review here.

Emails to Garmin’s customer support were answered, but nothing has been done and their English is poor and they didn’t even understand the problem. Overall, as a Golf Watch, give the Garmin VivoActive a miss and go with a rangefinder.

Update on the Garmin VivoActive: We tried this out at Hong Kong Golf Club Old Course. The course downloads automatically stepping onto the first tee, and you’re away. You can keep track of your score but we were only worried about distances. To see how accurate this device was, we took along our Leopold 4xi2 Rangefinder. First off, the actual hole distances can be up to 30 yards difference than what is on the tee markers. Not a single hole was even close to what the Garmin VivoActive displayed. I suspect this is more of a GPS measuring discrepancy between how Garmin are measuring and how Hong Kong Golf Club measure the distances. Regardless, it’s not that big a of a deal, except on Par 3’s. Measuring to back, front and middle of green is somewhat hard to judge, since it’s difficult to measure exact distances using the Leopold 4xi2, What we do know, is that sometimes when we measured a precise distance to the Pin, the back or front distances given by the Garmin VivoActive were actually more or less than the pin, meaning that those distances were inaccurate.

We compared measurements on probably three quarters of the holes, and most times the Garmin VivoActive distances just didn’t make sense. Again, if you’re a mid to high handicapper who’s not good enough to hit your irons consistent distances, than it probably doesnt matter too much, you want a distance to the middle of the green, and the Garmin VivoActive will give you an estimate. However, for better players, a rangefinder (we recommend the Leopold 4xi2) is going to be much more use and give you so much more confidence it’s not funny.

As a fitness tracker, the Garmin VivoActive does the trick. As a golf watch, mehhh…not for us.

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Firstly, this is our first drone, we’re not into RC aircraft and really only purchased it for aerial video. Deciding on what drone to buy depends somewhat on what you’re going to use it for. There are three versions of the Xiro Drone, the Xiro Drone “normal”, the Xiro Explorer V, and the Xiro Explorer G drone. We’re reviewing the Xiro Xplorer G, which is the one that has a gimble you can attach a GoPro to. The Xplorer V comes with a camera, but shooting just 720p it’s not really up with the times with most of the better drones today capable of shooting 4K.

Looks
The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is probably one of the best looking drones we’ve seen, it’s sleek, streamlined and the green on black makes it our favourite looking drone by quite a long way. It’s got a very low profile which also makes it look kinda cool, the legs are moveable, so you can fly it without a camera and put the legs up, or if you’re using the camera you’ll need to attach the slightly cumbersome gimble which holds the gopro. Like Jessica Alba, even with the legs down and gimble attached, it still looks good. The propellers are black and again, it just looks good. If you take the propellers off, you can hand carry the Xiro Xplorer G Drone with ease (the battery is removeable). We’ve hiked for around 45 mins hand carrying this drone with no problems (not including wind – more on that later).

Performance/Ease of Use
The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is very easy to fly unless you have no coordination, in which case no drone is going to be easy to fly. With absolutely no experience, our first time was made even easier by the comfortable remote controller and the simple setup. Under normal conditions, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone pretty much does what it’s told. Where the problems arise is with connectivity. We’ve crashed the Xiro Xplorer G Drone three times, twice due to just losing connection between the remote and the drone. Unfortunately, it crashed into concrete walls on two occasions but on a postive not, it survived both crashes, but not without some repairs.

The lose of connection is a real worry, and when they say always fly the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in open areas, take that seriously because you don’t want to lose control of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in a crowd of people (unless it’s full of Donald Trumps). Common sense says that applies to all drones, but we haven’t heard too may reports of other drones losing connection and the drone wandering off wherever it sees fit. The more famous DJI Phantom 3 Professional has addresses this issue and Xiro needs to also address this issue very quicky.
The Camera Experience

Yes, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone can accommodate a GoPro, but other than tilt up and down, you won’t be able to control it. Any video will need to be turned on prior to take off, and photos are out of the question. The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is NOT a photographers drone or a videographers drone. Basically you’re flying blind and perhaps the biggest letdown of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is that the propellers will fill up to half your video capture if you leave it in the upright (horizontal) position. To get the propellers out of the video, you need to tilt it down, which cuts out most of the sky, so what you end seeing is a lot of ground. The GoPro can point all the way down, but even then you can see the legs of Xiro Xplorer G Drone when it gets a bit windy. So if you’re looking for a great drone for video/photos, again, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is definitely not the drone for you.

The Gimble is quite easy to attach, but getting the GoPro in is not an easy task, and getting it out is downright difficult. Annoyingly, you will inevitably find yourself turning the GoPro on, and the video on and off trying to get the little sucker out. The last time we removed it from the Gimble, the GoPro had new names beginning with F, C and A. It can also make marks on the GoPro. We don’t care about this, but those looking to keep their GoPro in the best of condition will need to worry about this.

To test the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in varied conditions we took it up Dragon’s Back. In what we would call windy conditions, it faired okay, but in strong winds, it gets blown about and makes any kind of video impossible, as well as the landing extremely difficult (we crashed it trying to land it in high winds on top of a small mountain). The manual says not to use it in winds above Cat 4, but unless you have a very vast open, flat area to land, we don’t recommend using it. Upon crash landing, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone was still useable but now has a bit of a dent in it and the propellers are looking a bit sad. The Xiro Xplorer G Drone comes with a spare set of propellers, but as the beat up propellers don’t seem to affect the flight, we’re saving those for a big crash.

If you do crash the Xiro Xplorer G Drone some of the cables may come lose and you’ll need to do some repairs, not that easy, but not that difficult either. We must mention again it’s survived three crashes so the durability of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is pretty good, but the reasons for the crashes are the main concern. Unless you are particularly incompetent and or stupid, it’s difficult to crash the drone when you’re connected to it. Once you lose connection, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone has a mind of it’s own and will wander off like a lost dog anywhere it feels like, with you behind the control looking like a complete slapper if anybody happens to be watching. And if there’s people around, they will watch, almost like you’re having a shag in public, except with a drone they’re not afraid to get up close and even cop a feel. But I digress.

Battery life on the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is below average, they state up to 25 minutes, but we get about 13 minutes average, sometimes as low as 8 minutes and rarely higher than 15. There are some quite strict lipo battery rules you’re supposed to adhere to, and which we’ve followed, but driving any distance to fly the Xiro Xplorer G Drone and getting 10 minutes fly time is a little ridiculous.

The cost is RMB3,999, about USD$6,030, that’s about half the cost of the DJI Phantom 3 Professional, but there’s a big caveat. The support of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is basically non-existent. Repeated emails go unanswered and as Xiro is a new company, it’s not going to get better anytime soon. It’s also based in China with very little documentation in English and if these guys are going to compete with the big boys, they need to get their act together and fast. Perhaps they are just targeting the mainland, which is fine, but they’ve gone to the effort of having their website in English and made some instructional videos in English, but they won’t last long if they’re not willing to reply or engage customers. That’s a shame, because this drone has potential but people aren’t going to buy it if they know they won’t get any support after they buy it.

Conclusion
As other reviews of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone have stated, this is a good “first drone”. It’s easy to fly and if not for the numerous lost connections, would be even easier. If you’re just wanting to experiment with a drone and aren’t too concerned with taking high quality unimpeded video and can live with the fact you won’t be able to take any photos, then this is the drone for you. However, if you’re into Photography and looking to take some cinematic-esque video then the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is not the right drone. The next drone we buy won’t be a Xiro Xplorer G Drone, or the Xiro Xplorer V Drone or anything from Xiro as their customer support is non-existent.

We’ve tried getting in touch with Xiro to see if they wanted to address some of our comments, but no surprises, they ignored us. UPDATE: As of today, there website is down. Not a good sign.

Coming soon we’ll have another drone from China we’ll be reviewing and hopeully that’ll be more positive.

We’ll also give the DJI Phantom 3 a whirl and have the review up as soon as we’ve had a chance to test.

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