Get the Bushnell Ion Elite.
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| Blue Tees Player+ | Bushnell Ion Elite | |
|---|---|---|
| Price (MSRP) | $199.99Lower price | $219.99 |
Get the Bushnell Ion Elite.
Get the Bushnell Ion Elite. At $219.99, it's a true GPS watch with slope compensation, IP67 waterproofing, and full on-device course data — and it weighs 38 grams on your wrist. The Blue Tees Player+ is a different kind of device entirely: a golf speaker with GPS built in. It's worth considering if you actually want a Bluetooth speaker on your cart. If you just want GPS yardages and course information, the Ion Elite does more of that on its own, without needing your phone.
Both are no-subscription GPS devices with color touchscreens, green view, hazard distances, hole maps, manual shot tracking, and scoring. Both pull from roughly 40,000 preloaded courses with free updates. Neither includes green contours, virtual caddie, wind data, heart rate, or fitness tracking. Both are waterproof.
These two devices live completely different lives on the course. The Ion Elite is a 38-gram watch. You strap it to your wrist, glance at it between shots, and forget it's there. The Player+ is an 800-gram cart speaker with a 3-inch touchscreen. It mounts to your cart with a magnetic strip, blasts 30 watts of audio across 360 degrees, and doubles as a phone power bank. That's either exactly what you want or completely beside the point.
If you're walking, the Player+ is basically not an option — 800 grams is a lot to clip to a bag, and there's no wrist-mount. If you're riding a cart and you've been wanting a golf speaker anyway, it's a legitimately different value proposition.
Here's where things get interesting for the Player+. Front/center/back distances and hazard detection are all on the device. But full hole maps, green view, and flyover animations require the Blue Tees app running on your phone. So despite the big 3-inch touchscreen, the Player+ is more phone-dependent than it looks.
The Ion Elite keeps it all on the watch. GreenView with movable pin placement, HoleView shot planning, dynamic green mapping based on your line of play — that's all on-wrist. You can see the green shape, tap the pin to where it's actually cut, and get an adjusted distance. The Player+ shows you front/center/back; the Ion Elite lets you tap to any spot on the hole.
The Ion Elite has it. The Player+ does not. Bushnell calls it their patented Slope — the watch calculates a plays-like distance factoring in elevation change. That's a meaningful addition for hilly courses, and it's rare to find it in a GPS watch at this price point. The Player+ gives you raw yardages only.
The Ion Elite includes a tournament mode that disables slope, keeping it legal for competition. No equivalent on the Player+.
The Ion Elite is IP67 — fully dustproof and waterproof to 1 meter. The Player+ is IPX7, which means waterproof but not dust-rated. On a rainy day riding in a cart, both are fine. If you're worried about sand or grit getting into the speaker unit, that's worth knowing.
The Player+ gets 11 hours in GPS mode at 50% volume (4 hours at full blast). The Ion Elite gets 12+ hours. Both cover a round comfortably; both charge via cable (Ion Elite uses a proprietary magnetic 4-pin charger, Player+ uses USB-C). The Player+'s USB-C is more convenient for travel.
Get the Bushnell Ion Elite if:
Get the Blue Tees Player+ if:
One thing worth noting: Blue Tees has flagged the Player+ as discontinued and replaced it with the Player Pro, which adds on-device features and IP67 dust resistance. If you're shopping the Player+, you're buying remaining stock. That might come with a lower price, but it also means no future firmware updates and eventually no support.
These aren't really competing products — they're tools for different situations. The Player+ is a golf speaker with GPS capabilities; the Ion Elite is a GPS watch with slope compensation. For anyone who came to this comparison wanting a wrist GPS, the Ion Elite wins on every dimension that matters: it has slope, on-device course data, tournament mode, and it's 38 grams on your wrist. The Player+ wins if you want a speaker that also handles yardages and you're already committed to a cart round anyway.
The Ion Elite's one-year warranty versus the Player+'s two-year warranty is a minor knock, but given the Player+'s discontinuation, that longer warranty may be harder to exercise in practice.
Get the Bushnell Ion Elite.