The Quick Verdict
Honestly? These two work better together than they do apart — the Ion Elite showing you the whole hole from your wrist, the Tour V6 giving you the exact pin number when you need it. But the Tour V6 is discontinued, so buying it new is a gamble. If you're picking one device you can actually buy today, get the Ion Elite. It covers more of your round, handles course management you can't get from a rangefinder, and Bushnell still has it in production.
What They Actually Do
The Ion Elite is a GPS watch — strap it on and it loads your course automatically, showing hole maps, hazard distances, and green shape on your wrist throughout your round. The Tour V6 is a laser rangefinder — pull it out, point it at the flag, and it gives you the exact yardage. Both are Bushnell products, both deliver distance information, and both are legal for tournament play (with the right settings).
The Real Tradeoffs
Precision vs. the full picture
The Tour V6 is accurate to ±1 yard at 500 yards. That's genuinely impressive — when you have a flag to point at, a laser gives you a number a GPS watch can't match. But the Ion Elite gives you F/C/B yardages, hazard carries, layup distances, and a touchscreen where you can tap any point on the hole for its exact distance. You can't point a rangefinder at a bunker that's 40 yards ahead down the fairway and ask "do I need to lay up?" The watch answers that without you even thinking to ask.
Speed on the course
Glance at your wrist versus pull the rangefinder from your pocket, raise it, find the flag through the lens, wait for the jolt confirmation, read the display, put it away. On a busy course, the watch wins on pace of play without question. That said, ranging a specific tucked pin on a par 3 — especially over water or with a false front — is where the V6 earns its keep. The watch gives you center-green; the rangefinder gives you that pin.
What you see before you swing
This is a category-level difference. The Ion Elite shows you the hole. You're standing on a tee you've never played — 410-yard par 4, bunkers cutting into the right side of the fairway at 240, water short-left of the green. The watch lays all of that out before you even pull a club. The Tour V6 can't do that. It measures what you point it at; it doesn't show you what you should be thinking about.
A real-world flip side: you're 157 yards out, pin is cut back-right behind a false front, and center-green is actually only 150. The watch says 157 to the middle. The rangefinder says 164 to the actual flag. That's two clubs, potentially. That's where the laser wins.
Slope — and who actually has it
Weirdly, the Ion Elite has slope; the Tour V6 doesn't. The Ion Elite is Bushnell's first watch with their patented Slope technology, giving you compensated distances based on elevation change. The Tour V6 is tournament-legal because it has no slope mode at all. So if you want slope from a rangefinder, this particular Bushnell pairing doesn't deliver it — you'd get it from the watch instead.
The ecosystem angle
Both are Bushnell products sharing the Bushnell Golf app. Your Ion Elite syncs scorekeeping and stats post-round. The Tour V6 has no app connectivity or Bluetooth — it's a standalone tool. These aren't designed as a connected pair the way some same-brand GPS/rangefinder combos are. They work independently, not in tandem.
Cost and availability
The Ion Elite is $219.99 and in production. The Tour V6 is $299.99 and discontinued — so you're either finding leftover stock or buying secondhand. That price gap matters: the rangefinder costs more and you can't reliably get a new one.
Who Should Get Which
Get the Ion Elite if you want one device that handles your whole round — course layout, hazard distances, shot planning, scoring, and slope-adjusted yardages — on your wrist without fumbling for anything. Also the clear call if you've never used a rangefinder and don't particularly want to learn.
Get the Tour V6 if you already own a GPS device (or don't care about course management) and want the cleanest, most precise pin distance on an approach shot. No subscription, no charging, tournament-legal as-is. If you find one at a good clearance price, it's still a capable rangefinder — just don't count on finding it new.
Get both if you're a single-digit player who wants full course strategy plus exact pin yardage, the combined cost doesn't hurt, and you can find the V6 in stock somewhere. Plenty of serious golfers run this exact setup: watch on wrist for the overview, rangefinder in the pocket for the shot itself. The problem is the V6's availability, not the concept.
The Bottom Line
The Tour V6 is a good rangefinder — accurate, tournament-legal, simple. But it's discontinued, and the Ion Elite is still very much available. Buying just one? The Ion Elite is the answer. It gives you more information across a full round, costs less, and you can actually buy it new today. If you do track down a Tour V6 on clearance to pair with it, that's a solid combination — but the watch stands on its own in a way a standalone rangefinder without slope can't.