After a couple of months with the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2), there’s no other way to put it: this is the best golf watch on the planet right now

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): One minute review

Simply put, the Garmin^[2] MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) is the best golf watch^[3] money can buy, and one of the best bits of tech I have ever tested or even used, period. There, I have said it. I said something similar about the Garmin Approach S70 when I tested that last year, I know, but this premium watch really is something else.

I’ve tested a whole range of tech in my years, and there’s only a handful of products that I’ve really hated letting go of, and in a very strong field, this golf watch is absolutely one of them. If you’re looking for a do-everything golf watch but one that does everything at a premium level, brilliantly, then this is it.

In every functionality I tested, this watch has excelled, and from strap to screen, its design and build have proved a perfect balance of confidence-giving robustness, ease of use, and slick looks.

Design-wise, the Golfer (Gen 2) is a beauty. My review unit is the Carbon Edition, and its sleek black and green colorway makes for an aesthetically pleasing watch on the face of it, but there’s sturdiness under the hood from the leather and rubber strap, to the robust bezel and case, and especially the excellent domed glass screen – itself a joy to use. It also has a pleasant weight and size to it that makes its one size (46mm total diameter) hit the goldilocks physical size for me of being great for sport, as well as a daily driver.

The watch comes with all the excellent golf features that we’ve come to expect from Garmin. Extra features like the PlaysLike Distances are brilliant; there are 43,000 courses preloaded, and there are so many other features, such as swing tempo measures, stat tracking, and more. Throw in the fact that when you buy the watch, you get three CT10 trackers that you can put in the top of your clubs too, and the package is basically complete and void of holes (nearly). Then, team this with the Garmin Golf Membership subscription – sadly not included with the watch despite its high price – and you have the ultimate on-course caddie if you really are going big.

It not only looks the part on the wrist as a daily smartwatch, but it’s chic, easy to use, responsive, and does everything well. I wish there were a more ‘premium looking’ font on the watch, though, as Garmin’s default one doesn’t scream more-than-two-thousand-dollar device.

A lot will be made of the MARQ Golfer (Gen 2)’s price tag, but we’re swimming in premium waters here; an end of the pool that all markets of tech have. And there is a market for this. And if this isn’t for you, then Garmin offers a host of alternative options that are cheaper and more focused. But if you are in the market for a best-of-the-best golf watch, then read on to find out why the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) is the absolute peak of wrist-bound on-course companions and the premium option for you.

If you’re looking to go big, go premium, and go once on your golf watch, this is the watch for you.

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Specifications

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Price and availability

• List prices of $2,300 or $3,100 / £1,999.99 or £2,699.99 / AU$3,900 or AU$5,249 (Fused Carbon or Titanium version)
• Premium price tag makes it expensive, but the value proposition is strong
• No subscription included feels a little mean

Right, let’s get the big one out of the way first: this is an expensive smart or golf watch. There is a market for this level of premium golf watch, and the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) certainly doesn’t swim alone here.

Garmin, as a brand, is also one of the best for offering watches up the entire scale of golf watch premium-ness, too; heck, even some of its non-golf devices can help you out on the course. As a result, the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) earns its place in the brand’s lineup, appealing to those who are on the lookout for a top-tier golf and smart watch that delivers without compromise.

So, it’s expensive, but does it offer good value? After using it for a long while, and comparing it to my also-premium TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition^[4], I think it does. Its featureset and capability are unrelenting and truly top-tier. As I said above, if you really are looking for one premium golf watch to rule them all, then this is it. It does everything the Tag Heuer does, and it’s got all that Garmin excellence in data tracking, too.

It’s also worth noting that, at the time of writing, there are two variants of the watch available and a sizable gap between them in terms of price. My unit is the Fused Carbon Fiber model, which sits a full $800 / £700 / AU$1,349 more than the Grade 5 Titanium model. As a result, the latter makes a much more compelling value proposition argument, and is only a ‘bit’ more than the Tag Heuer.

There is one notable drawback on pricing, for me, though: it feels a little mean to offer a complete golf watch but not include a Garmin Golf Membership subscription.. This feels like it would be a worthy addition from both price tag and premium-experience perspectives.

• Value score: 4/5

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Design

• 1.2in / 30.4mm AMOLED screen is superb
• Domed sapphire crystal lens material is a joy to use
• Slick, robust, chic, perfectly weighted, and well-made

The case and bezel are rock solid and confidence-inspiring, and the aesthetic of the Carbon model is slick and a good balance of understatedness and a bit of flash. The build is so good here: you’re also getting a good water resistance rating of 10 ATM, allowing it to withstand swims.

The AMOLED screen is wonderfully sharp, bright, and vivid, and the domed lens is something I wish all smartwatches had across the board. The screen is also slightly smaller than the Approach S70 (a purely golf-focused watch), which is something to be aware of if you value screen real estate above all else, but I actually find it to make for a better watch overall.

Even the watch strap is top-tier. The outside is a smart-looking leather strap that ensures it looks the part at all times, and the inside is made of an FKM rubber, which is perfect for when you get hot on the course, as well as for ensuring it doesn’t slip and slide all over the shop. Take note, other golf watch manufacturers.

A big gripe of mine with the brand’s golf watches – and even with some of the best Garmin watches^[5] – is the subpar bespoke charging mechanism, which means you have to lay your watch flat on its front and have a cable sticking up from its rear. Luckily, the Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) features a different solution, which, much like my Samsung smartwatch^[6], involves a flat charger tool that means you can lay your watch flat on its back. It’s not the nice dock that I have with my Tag Heuer, but it’s definitely an improvement.

The buttons are intuitive to make navigating the watch and apps very easy, easier than the S70’s three buttons, which have multiple functions each. However, I do have a minor gripe with one small design element: Garmin’s default font.

While it’s a perfectly serviceable font and makes for clear reading, it started to grate on me a little after a while using the Gen 2. It looks a bit simple and not as chic as the font on my Tag Heuer, and thus doesn’t feel as premium as the watch itself or befitting of such an otherwise premium experience.

• Design score: 5/5

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Features

• All the golf features you could want (bar one)
• All the fitness trackers you could want
• All the daily smartwatch features you could want

In brief, when it comes to features, the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) is bursting at the seams and has everything you could possibly wish for from a premium golf watch. Or a smart watch. Or a fitness tracker. Or a sports smart watch. There are frankly too many to go over.

Headlines in the golf feature set make for delightful reading, though. It has all the courses you could want and presents them beautifully. It’s got a supremely accurate golfing yardages, built into a fulsome and complete virtual caddie experience, offering features for shot dispersion, wind direction and speed, pin finder for blind shots, club tracking (with the CT10 trackers), a brilliant PlaysLike distance feature which tells you the actual yardage of the holes with weather and topography factored in, information about hazards and doglegs, score and stat tracking, swing temp features, and more. It’s frankly wild how much Garmin has crammed in just from a golfing perspective.

The only golf feature ‘missing’ is the green contour data and imaging. This can only be acquired via a paid subscription to the Garmin Golf Membership – that’ll still be an extra $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$14.49 a month, sadly. I really think Garmin could have included that with this watch, given the device’s price tag and commitment folks will be making.

As a Garmin watch, it also channels the best of the brand’s pedigree when it comes to sports, fitness, and health tracking, too. Once again it is impossible to go through all those features, but know that if you’re looking for your next golf watch to be capable of handling your exercise and workout routines, sleep health and body battery monitoring, body condition tracking, offer maps for walking and trail hiking, as well as have you covered for stock trading, skiing, paying with your watch, then the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) can handle it.

As a premium watch, it also offers a superb experience for daily use, with plenty of functions for messaging, music control, calendar, sunset, and weather viewing. Whatever you think you want your watch to do, the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) can almost certainly do it.

• Features score: 5/5

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Performance

• Unparalleled on-course performance
• A joy and easy to use with intuitive controls
• Excellent as a day-to-day smartwatch and for fitness and health, and its battery lasts forever

As might be obvious already, this is probably the closest thing to a perfect golf watch as you can get right now. The Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) is basically unparalleled in its on-course golfing features and makes for the perfect virtual caddie. This is something I cannot emphasize enough, either.

There are basically too many excellent golf features to mention individually, but the headline ones are sublime. Firstly, you’ll be incredibly hard-pushed to find a course that it doesn’t have a map for, with over 43,000 preloaded onto the device.

Once you are on the course, the complete virtual caddie role that the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) successfully plays is extraordinary. The maps of the holes are clear, the yardages are accurate and on-point, the wind speed and direction tool is useful, and I cannot imagine playing without the PlaysLike distance feature now. This feature is so good and brilliant on the course, factoring in weather and environmental conditions as well as topography to give you a more accurate yardage for club selection. Combine this with the brilliant views of greens and hazards, a shot dispersion feature that can help you factor in what could come into play, and the pinpointer feature for when you have zero sight of the green, and it’s a complete experience. And that’s before the quality round and score logging, too.

Enhancing this further is the shot tracking that the watch is capable of when combined with the CT10 trackers for your club. While my Tag Heuer has built-in shot tracking and is thus more convenient for this, the Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) covers its bases on that front by coming with three of said trackers too.

The display and domed glass make the watch a delight to use, whatever the weather outside on the course, too, with the domed form of the lens making a brilliant screen to interact with compared to a flat screen – it’s a subtle design difference, but an impactful one.

Flitting back between normal smartwatch and golf mode is as simple as one button press, and this ease of use and intuition is a microcosm of the broader experience of having the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) on your wrist. Its design and build mean that it’s also beautifully weighted and comfortable, looking great for sports and socialising alike.

Engaging with other features is a joy, too. From messaging to maps, from stress to sleep, and the array of wider health and fitness apps, the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) excels.

The above is all supported by a battery life you’ll rarely have to worry about. For example, I used the watch for two weeks, all day, every day, and for two full rounds of golf, and still had a bit more than 10% battery life left over. Garmin lists the battery life as “Up to 16 days” when in smartwatch mode, and “up to 42 hours” in GPS-only mode, and my experience has me believe that this is accurate. After a while, I gave up counting and tracking the battery life; in all honesty, it is that good.

My gripes are tiny, and I feel like I’m nitpicking intensely, but at this price, it pays to be hyper-aware of anything that impacts the experience.

As previously mentioned, it seems like a misstep to not include a subscription to the Garmin Golf Membership to unlock even more features for the watch. Additionally, the default Garmin font doesn’t ‘feel’ at home on such a premium watch. A small nitpick, I know, but compared to the slick Tag Heuer presentation of text, this does let the Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) down. Finally, I have noticed that the default style for notifications is showing the original or first message that gave you the notification, not the most recent. As a result, glancing at the watch to see what’s been said most recently in a conversation or group chat is impossible after you’ve received a few messages.

However, these really are nitpicks of the smallest kind. Overlooking these tiny complaints, the Garmin Golfer MARQ (Gen 2) does everything spectacularly, and it’s the best smart or golf watch I have ever used.

• Performance score: 5/5

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Scorecard

Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2): Should I buy?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2)

I used the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) over the course of several weeks, playing multiple rounds at my home course in Somerset and away in Germany, and using it as my daily driver smartwatch. I have used almost all of its features, including messaging, music controls, fitness and sleep, and more.

I compared the Garmin MARQ Golfer (Gen 2) to my TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition, as well as a cheaper ShotScope G6 GPS watch, to see how big the gap is between a competitor and a simpler option on the market.

I was able to compare the watches on the course to see how yardages, features, and overall ease of use as golf watches and smartwatches matched up between them, as well as live with it for a long while to gauge the everyday qualities of it.

References

1. ^{^} Find out more about how we test. (www.techradar.com)
2. ^{^} Garmin (www.techradar.com)
3. ^{^} best golf watch (www.techradar.com)
4. ^{^} TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition (www.techradar.com)
5. ^{^} best Garmin watches (www.techradar.com)
6. ^{^} Samsung smartwatch (www.techradar.com)