What They Have in Common
Same 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen. Same 390 × 390 resolution. Same Gorilla Glass 3 lens. Same 43,000 preloaded courses, same free basic course data, same 15 hours GPS battery, same 5 ATM water resistance, USB-C charging, slope mode, tournament mode, and smart notifications. Both require a Garmin Golf membership ($99.99/yr) to unlock green contours.
Where They Differ
AutoShot and PlaysLike — this is the real gap
The S44 has neither. The S50 has both, built in, no extras required.
AutoShot means the S50 tracks your shots automatically — it logs where you hit from, marks distance, and populates your round stats without you doing anything. On the S44, you're tapping the screen to mark shots manually. That's fine for scorekeeping, but if you want post-round stats — strokes gained, fairways hit, proximity to hole — you're doing extra work every hole or skipping it entirely.
PlaysLike Distance adjusts yardages for elevation change. Hit into a green that's 20 feet above you? The S50 tells you the adjusted plays-like number, not just the raw distance. The S44 gives you the raw number; PlaysLike is locked behind a Garmin Golf membership on that model. So you're either paying $99.99/yr to get it on the S44, or just buying the S50 once and having it for free. When you factor in even two years of membership, the S44's lower sticker price evaporates.
The smartwatch features — substantial difference
The S44 is a golf watch that happens to sit on your wrist between rounds. The S50 functions as a real smartwatch.
S50 adds: heart rate monitor, sleep tracking, fitness profiles, Garmin Pay, and 4GB of music storage. The S44 has basic activity tracking — steps and calories — and that's it. No heart rate, no workouts, no tapping your watch to pay for a round. If you're someone who wears a GPS watch all day anyway, the S50 justifies itself faster.
Weight — genuinely surprising
The S50 is lighter. By 13 grams. That sounds small until you realize the S50 comes in at 29g with its default nylon ComfortFit band, while the S44 is 42g with silicone. In wrist-wear terms, 29g is almost imperceptible. The S44's silicone band adds more weight and some people find silicone stickier in heat. The S50's nylon band tends to breathe better over a four-hour round. If you've ever finished 18 holes with a sweaty wrist, the difference matters.
Strokes Gained
The S50 has it. The S44 doesn't — the spec sheet flags that strokes gained "may be available via app" but can't confirm it, so don't count on it with the S44. For golfers who track performance data seriously, this is a real feature gap.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the S44 if:
- You're replacing an older Garmin watch and just want the AMOLED upgrade at the lowest price
- You don't care about post-round stats — you keep a scorecard and call it done
- You already own CT10 sensors and plan to use manual tracking
- You have a separate fitness tracker or phone for everything non-golf
- $300 is your actual ceiling, and $400 isn't
Buy the S50 if:
- You want shot tracking without buying sensors or manually logging every swing
- You want PlaysLike Distance without paying for a membership year over year
- You wear a watch all day and want it to do more than count steps
- You run, bike, or go to the gym and want those activities tracked too
- You want Garmin Pay so you can leave your wallet in the cart
- You care about strokes gained and post-round analytics
- You're buying a watch you'll wear for 3+ years (the daily-driver features make that more likely)
The Bottom Line
The S44 is a trimmed-down golf GPS in a nice AMOLED package. It does what it says. But the S50 is the watch Garmin clearly designed around, and the features that are missing from the S44 — AutoShot, PlaysLike, heart rate, strokes gained — aren't minor conveniences. They're why most people buy a GPS watch instead of just checking a free app. The $100 gap is real, but stretched across three or four years, it barely registers. Factor in the membership you'd need to get PlaysLike on the S44, and the S50 costs less over time anyway.
Get the Garmin Approach S50.
See Also