What They Have in Common
Both are GPS devices in the same price tier, both include 35,000–40,000 preloaded courses, and both do manual shot tracking and digital scorecards. Neither has green contours, slope mode, heart rate monitoring, or strokes gained. They're course-awareness tools, not full analytics platforms — one just happens to also pump music.
Where They Differ
Form Factor: Wrist vs. Cart
This is really the whole comparison. The LX2 is a watch — 1.28-inch color touchscreen, sits on your wrist, includes a cradle that clips to your bag or belt if you prefer handheld. You never set it down, you don't have to remember to charge the cart before you leave, and it doesn't add anything to the cart rental setup. The Blue Tees Player+ is an 800g speaker unit that mounts magnetically to your cart or clubs. It's portable, but it's also a thing you're carrying — or rather, your cart is carrying.
That difference shapes every part of the experience. Checking yardage on the LX2 means glancing at your wrist. Checking yardage on the Player+ means glancing at the cart-mounted 3-inch screen. If you walk courses, the Player+ isn't really designed for you — it's a cart tool, and a heavy one at that.
GPS Features and Phone Dependency
On the surface, the Player+ looks feature-rich: color touchscreen, green view, hazard detection, hole maps. But there's a catch buried in the specs: full hole maps, green view, and flyover mode all require the Blue Tees app on your phone. The device gives you front/center/back yardages and hazard detection on its own. That's not nothing, but it makes the Player+ less phone-independent than you'd expect for $200.
The LX2's situation is simpler to understand. The base PAR plan (no annual fee) gives you F/C/B distances. If you upgrade to Eagle membership, you unlock IntelliGreen, HoleVue, and full hazard targets. SkyCaddie's ground-verified course maps are a genuine selling point — they're not generic coordinates, they're mapped by people who walked the courses. Whether the Eagle upgrade is worth the annual cost depends on how much you use those features, but at least the free tier is honest about what it is.
The Speaker Factor
The Player+ plays music at 30W through a dual-driver 360° speaker, Bluetooth range up to 30 feet, doubles as a phone power bank. These are legitimately good features if you want a cart speaker anyway. The battery reportedly covers 36 holes at moderate volume. If you were going to buy a Bluetooth cart speaker separately, the Player+ collapses those two purchases into one.
But you're paying for that integration. The LX2 at $149.95 (on sale at $99.95 at time of writing) is a GPS watch. The Player+ at $199.99 is a GPS speaker. If the music matters to you, the math changes. If you just want yardages, you'd be buying speaker capability you didn't need.
One More Thing on the Player+
It's discontinued. Blue Tees has moved on to the Player Pro. The Player+ is still available through retailers, but stock is what it is — and at the same $199.99 price point, the newer Player Pro reportedly adds on-device features the Player+ requires the app for. If you're drawn to the Blue Tees speaker-GPS concept, that's probably worth a look before committing to the Player+.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the SkyCaddie LX2 if:
- You want GPS yardages on your wrist without managing a mounted device
- You walk courses, or mix walking and riding
- You want no annual fees on a functional GPS setup (PAR plan covers the basics)
- You play a lot of courses outside your home area — SkyCaddie's ground-verified maps have a real reputation for accuracy on less common tracks
- Budget matters and you can catch the $99.95 sale price
Buy the Blue Tees Player+ if:
- You always ride and you were already going to buy a cart speaker
- You want spoken yardages out loud, not just on a screen
- You're fine keeping your phone in your pocket for the full hole maps and flyover features
- The power bank feature is genuinely useful to you (it charges your phone mid-round)
- You understand you're buying a closing-out product and the price reflects that
The Bottom Line
The LX2 wins on simplicity, form factor, and value. It does GPS on your wrist, no annual fees required, from a brand with a real track record on course accuracy. The Player+ is a clever product — a golf speaker and a GPS device in one — but a chunk of its feature set lives in the app, and the device itself is discontinued. For most golfers who want reliable yardages on a round, the LX2 is the clear call.
Get the SkyCaddie LX2.