What They Have in Common
Both are Tier 1 Garmin Golf products with 43,000+ preloaded courses, free basic yardages, Virtual Caddie, AutoShot tracking, green contours (membership required), wind data, plays-like distance, full-color hole maps, hazard view, strokes gained, slope mode, tournament mode, USB-C charging, and CT10 compatibility. Both require a $99.99/yr Garmin Golf membership to unlock green contours.
Where They Differ
Form factor — handheld vs wrist
This is the biggest split. The G82 is a handheld device: 308g (nearly 11 oz), a 5-inch touchscreen you pull out of your pocket or cart holder, and a form factor closer to a tablet than a GPS watch. The S70 is 56g on your wrist. That's not a minor difference in feel — it's a completely different relationship with the device during your round.
On the course, the S70 means glancing at your wrist for front/center/back, tapping for hole detail, and keeping both hands free. The G82 means picking up a device, holding it, interacting with it on a bigger screen. Some golfers love the handheld screen size for reading contours and hazard details. Most find that a wrist-worn device fits the rhythm of play better.
The G82's radar launch monitor — genuinely unique
Here's what makes the G82 weird in the best way: it has a built-in radar-based launch monitor. Club head speed, ball speed, smash factor, estimated distance, putting metrics (ball speed, club speed, tempo, stroke length). Warm-up modes, virtual rounds, driving range practice, tempo training. That's not a GPS feature — that's a practice tool you'd otherwise spend $300-500+ on separately.
If you're working on your swing, using a launch monitor for range sessions, and want course GPS in the same device, the G82 is genuinely compelling. That use case is narrow, but it's real. No watch does this.
The S70's smartwatch features
The S70 does things a handheld GPS never will. Heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, fitness profiles, smart notifications, 32GB music storage, contactless payments (Garmin Pay), and 16 days of watch-mode battery life. You can wear it Tuesday through Sunday, track your sleep Monday night, get your texts during your round on Friday, and pay at the turn without pulling out your wallet.
The G82 has none of this. It's a golf device. Nothing wrong with that — but if you're spending $599, you're buying a golf-only tool. The S70 at $699 covers golf plus daily life.
Battery and display
GPS battery: G82 gets 25 hours, S70 gets 20. Both are fine for any round, including slow rounds with a 5-hour pace. If you're doing consecutive multi-round days, the G82's extra hours matter. In radar mode, the G82 drops to 8 hours — that's the cost of running the launch monitor.
Display: the S70's 1.4-inch AMOLED is sharp, colorful, and very readable in sunlight — that's the advantage of AMOLED tech. The G82's transflective color touchscreen is larger (5 inches is genuinely a lot of real estate) but transflective tech doesn't have the same pop. Bigger isn't always better here; AMOLED often wins in outdoor readability per square inch.
Subscription math
Same deal on both: green contours and enhanced features require $99.99/yr. Over three years, that's ~$300 on top of either device. Total cost of ownership: G82 ~$900, S70 ~$1,000. The gap between these two is $100 at purchase ($699 vs $599), but functionally you're comparing products in the same tier with the same ongoing costs.
Who Should Buy Which
Get the Garmin Approach S70 if:
- You want a GPS you wear all day, not just on the course
- Heart rate, sleep tracking, music, or contactless payments matter to you
- You prefer glancing at your wrist over pulling out a device
- You don't have a launch monitor and aren't shopping for one
- Daily usability matters as much as golf features
Get the Garmin Approach G82 if:
- You want a practice device AND a course GPS in one unit
- You're a range rat who'd use a launch monitor weekly
- You work with an instructor and want trackable swing data
- The 5-inch screen for reading contours and hazard detail is genuinely useful to your game
- You don't need smartwatch features at all — just golf
The Bottom Line
These are both excellent Garmin Golf products, but they're not really competing for the same golfer. The S70 is a smartwatch that's exceptional at golf. The G82 is a golf device with a radar lab inside it. For someone who wants GPS on the course and daily wearability, the S70 is the obvious answer. For someone who wants to track their swing at the range and use the same device for rounds, the G82 is the only handheld on the market doing that.
Most golfers should go with the S70. The $100 price gap is real but not decisive — the difference is whether you want the launch monitor or not.
Get the Garmin Approach S70 (47mm).