If you take your round of golf seriously, then you should have heard about the Garmin’s range of GPS watches. The Approach S40 is their latest and is up for pre-order. Preloaded with more than 41 000 golf courses from around the world, it shows you the exact layout of the hole you’re about the play, including distances to the front, middle and back of the green, as well as hazards.

This golf GPS smartwatch includes Garmin’s AutoShot game tracker that also measures and auto-records shot locations and distances for post-round analysis on the Garmin Golf app. If you want even better automatic game tracking capabilities, it can pair with the optional Approach CT10 club tracking sensors. These are pressed into the top of the handle of your clubs, detecting which club you are using and automatically keeping your score card updated, according to Garmin. However, the company does state that putts are not tracked while some shots, particularly chip shots around the green, may not be tracked either.

The S40 does not include the compass or gyroscope that the more expensive S60 has, nor does it have any swimming profiles, but it can keep track when you go for runs.

The device isn’t as bulky as the S60, and is a good-looking smartwatch with its 1.2" colour touchscreen (240x240 pixels, sunlight viewable) and metal bezel. It can track your steps and sleep, although a heart monitor is not included. Smartwatch functionality you’ll find onboard includes notifications for incoming calls, texts and emails amongst others. With 15 hours’ worth of battery life when in golf mode, Garmin believes that you can fit in two rounds of 18 holes if you want. They obviously haven’t seen us play.

If you want to pre-order the Garmin Approach S40, you have one of three choices. There’s the regular grey version retailing for R5k. Take a step up and you get the S40 Premium which contains no discernible differences that we could pick up on, except for a nicer colour - black or white and costing R500 more (Stateside the colours cost the same). Finally, you get the bundle version which includes the black S40 with three CT 10 golf club sensors to help with automatic tracking, which is a R1000 more expensive. Pre-orders can be done here. Hit play to see the Approach S40 in action.