What They Have in Common
Both are touchscreen GPS devices with full-color hole maps, hazard view, and green view. Both cover 40,000-plus courses worldwide, neither requires a subscription for core GPS and mapping, and both are legal for tournament play. You're not choosing between a good GPS and a bad one — you're choosing between two different form factors with meaningfully different use cases.
Where They Differ
The obvious one: form factor
The Approach J1 weighs 29 grams and straps to your wrist. The Caddie weighs 544 grams and straps to your cart. That's not a nuance — it's the entire comparison. If you walk the course, this decision is already made for you: The Caddie isn't designed for walking golfers, and Pinned says so explicitly. It needs a cart or trolley.
The J1's weight is worth pausing on. At 29g, it's so light you might forget you're wearing it, which matters for junior golfers specifically — Garmin designed it to stay out of a young player's swing mechanics. For adult golfers too, a 29g watch clears the swing differently than most GPS watches in the $300 range.
Screen size and display quality
The Caddie wins on raw screen size, and it's not close. Eight inches of HD color touchscreen is legitimately larger than anything else in the handheld GPS category — over three inches bigger than the Garmin G82. If you're used to squinting at a 1.2-inch watch face to read yardages, the experience of a tablet-sized GPS is a different thing entirely.
The J1's 1.2-inch AMOLED at 390×390 is sharp and bright for a watch display. AMOLED handles sunlight readability better than most LCD panels. But it's still 1.2 inches. You're reading yardages, not maps.
Green view and mapping features
The Caddie includes green contour heat maps (what Pinned calls Greens Heat Maps) and plays-like distances that account for slope. Both of those are behind Pinned Premium membership on the Caddie — but the first year is currently free. The long-term cost matters here: Pinned hasn't published the renewal price, so you don't know what you're signing up for after year one. That's worth flagging before you factor those features into your buying decision.
The J1 has no green contours and no plays-like distances. Its green view is a flat overhead image where you can tap for distances to any point on the green. That's useful. It's not the same as contour data.
Shot tracking
The J1 uses Garmin AutoShot — the watch detects your swing automatically and marks the shot. It works reasonably well for tee shots and full swings, less reliably for chips and short game. The Caddie's shot tracking is manual: you tap to mark each shot. Manual tracking means you decide when to log; automatic tracking means you're trusting the sensor. Neither is strictly better — it depends on whether you want to think about it or not.
Smartwatch features (and lack of them)
Neither product does much beyond golf. No heart rate monitor, no sleep tracking, no music, no contactless payments. The J1 has fitness profiles but no smart notifications. Both are single-purpose golf devices that happen to have different form factors.
Charging
The Caddie charges via USB-C. The J1 uses Garmin's proprietary charger — something you'll need to remember to pack separately. For a $300 watch in 2025, proprietary charging is a small but real inconvenience.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Garmin Approach J1 if:
- You walk the course, carry your bag, or play on a walking-only course
- You're buying this for a junior golfer who needs a light, non-intrusive GPS watch
- You want automatic shot tracking without manually logging every swing
- You want an AMOLED wrist GPS at $300 without committing to any membership
- You occasionally play casual fitness rounds and want the watch to track that too
Buy the Pinned The Caddie if:
- You always ride in a cart or use a trolley — and by "always" I mean actually always, not usually
- You want the biggest, clearest GPS screen available in a handheld at any price
- You value green contour heat maps and plays-like distances and you're comfortable not knowing what Pinned Premium costs after the free first year
- You enjoy wager formats — wolf, Nassau, Stableford — and want live tracking built into the GPS device itself
- You want USB-C charging and don't want to deal with proprietary cables
The Bottom Line
The Caddie is a genuinely ambitious product. An 8-inch touchscreen golf tablet with 45,000 courses, no subscription for GPS, and a cart magnet is a real thing that didn't exist before. But "cart only" is not a small asterisk — it's the whole premise, and the warranty that excludes screen damage on a mostly-screen device is the kind of detail that stings later. The J1 is lighter, cheaper, works everywhere, and doesn't require you to own a cart. The one real miss on the J1 is the proprietary charger, which feels out of place on a 2025 device. Otherwise it's a clean, lightweight, capable GPS watch that punches above its price with an AMOLED display and AutoShot tracking.
Get the Garmin Approach J1.