Garmin Approach S60

Admittedly, I’ve been a skeptic of GPS golf watches, always finding a range finder to be more precise and convenient — and less expensive. And quite a few of my golf buddies share my point of view. However, after wearing the $400 Garmin Approach S60 for a handful of rounds, including a 36-hole day, it might be time to leave the range finder at home. The latest golf-specific smartwatch from Garmin offers all the features avid golfers and fitness fanatics need to navigate their way around the course.

It took me less than 10 minutes to complete the initial setup of the Approach S60. I followed the on-screen prompt to download the Garmin Connect app to my phone, created a free account and used a Bluetooth connection to sync the S60 with my new Garmin Connect account. From this point forward, just about every setting is controlled from the watch.

Warming Up: Design and Interface

Although the Approach S60 doesn’t look particularly sleek or flashy, it has a clean design and black matte finish that looks great both during fitness activities and as a basic everyday smartwatch.  At 1.8 ounces, it’s also lightweight and comfortable to wear throughout a round. The round 1.2-inch touch screen is large enough to view and interact with the widgets when wearing a glove or when drenched in sweat (it worked in the pool, too — the watch is water-resistant to 165 feet), and was perfectly clear, even in direct sunlight.

Overall, the S60 is easy to navigate. Three buttons on the right side let you select activities and move through menus. Unlike most of Garmin’s GPS watches, the S60 has a touch screen, which you can use to swipe through a few basic widgets that summarize daily activities, weather and your last round played. The golf app follows the same general flow and has drill-down capabilities from a round summary down to the club selection and distances for each stroke. 

Also see: GARMIN GOLF WATCH Review

Teeing Off: Using the Approach S60 on the Course

From the first tee, I had no problems using the watch’s GPS to locate any of the courses I played since Garmin claims support for 40,000 courses in the U.S. At the start of each hole, the display has the standard yardages to the front, center and back of the green. It also shows the elevation relative to the green and has a compass to point you in the direction of the hole during blind shots. Zooming in and out to view hazards and check distances to anywhere on a hole proved to be useful in a number of situations, especially on a course that I hadn’t played before. For approach shots, there’s a “green view” where the pin placement can be adjusted using the touch screen to get even more precise distances.

The GPS features of the S60 exceeded my expectations. To validate its precision, I did an informal comparison of the distances provided by the S60 against a high-end range finder and a few apps available on the Apple Watch 2. While the S60 and range finder were consistently within a few yards of each other, the Apple Watch occasionally dropped the GPS connection and wasn’t reliable enough to use on the course.

There are still advantages to a range finder for more precise distance and elevation measurements, but the overall reliability of the S60’s measurements from tee to green coupled with the hole-view features make a convincing case to leave the range finder in the bag.

Back in the Clubhouse: Battery Life and Other Features

After each of the first four rounds I played wearing the S60, the battery never fell below 60 percent. Naturally, I thought this justified testing the battery over a 36-hole day of golf. While not advertised by Garmin for use over back-to-back rounds, the S60, which started the day fully charged, was still kicking at 6 percent by time I was in the clubhouse. The watch probably would have had more life left if I had paused the golf app between rounds.

The S60 is also equipped with a few additional golf features, such as the option to record each club used, adjust scores for handicap and keep score of playing partners using a few different formats. It also comes with a swing tempo app, which is supposed to time backswing and downswing, but this requires the TruSwing sensor ($149, sold separately) that attaches to your club. Honestly, I’m going to a golf simulator for any advanced swing metrics.

One complaint with previous versions of Garmin’s software was the inability to view and edit scores for individual holes during the round. Garmin resolved that with a scorecard view that you can access at any point with the touch of the side button. You can also set the watch to guess at how many swings you took from tee to green. While it won’t count putts, the feature might be useful for some of those golfers who get amnesia and don’t seem to remember exactly how many strokes they took.

In addition to the golf and fitness features, the Approach S60 comes with smartwatch-like features for those who would wear it every day.  It’s easy to change the watch face using the Connect app, and you can configure which notifications you’ll  receive from your phone.  I set mine to show notifications for calls, text messages, Instagram comments, Google maps and from my news feed.  The focused golfer will appreciate that none of the notifications come through while the golf app is active.

Bottom Line

Although my game didn’t improve while wearing Garmin’s Approach S60, I do think the avid golfer has a sound alternative to a range finder with many of the necessary bells and whistles that we’ve come to expect from smartwatches. At $400, the S60 isn’t cheap, but it looks cool, is super-reliable, and it has all the golf and smartwatch features to justify that price. 

How to Choose The Best Solar Panels for Your Solar Power System

Solar panels are made of connected solar cells able to produce electricity when exposed to sunlight. Solar panels are the main components of solar electric system. Typically solar panels have a lifetime of 25 years.

There are three main types of solar panels – monocrystalline, polycrystalline and thin-film (amorphous) ones.

What type of the solar panels is the best?

How to Choose The Best Solar Panels for Your Solar Power System?

Monocrystalline are the most efficient – that is they require the least possible area to install – but they are also the most expensive ones.

Polycrystalline solar panels are less efficient than monocrystalline ones but their price is much more affordable.

Thin-film solar panels are the least expensive ones but they require the largest area to install – about twice as much as monocrystalline panels. Therefore thin-film panels are a good choice only if you have enough area available on your roof.

Despite some recent achievements in thin-film panels production technology, it should be noted that crystalline panels (mono- and poly- ones) are the common type preferred for photovoltaic systems.

What types of solar panels to select is a task of finding an overlap between your budget and the area available on your roof. You should also mind that required space between the installed solar panels takes about 20% of the available area.

Often people ask what to do if they are ‘on a shoe string budget’.

Sure buying and installing either cheap solar panels or second-hand solar panels is a viable option but not by all means.

Cheap panels have the following common characteristics regardless of their type:
Cheap solar modules are NOT produced by an established or well-known brand
Compared to their branded counterparts, they are less efficient in converting solar energy into electricity in cloudy days
Warranty period lasts usually 1-2 years
They suffer more the Staebler-Wronski effect (refer to previous pages) and the expected degradation of their performance comes too early and too fast.
They are using plate glass instead of more advanced tempered glass. This makes them more vulnerable and increases the odds of fire hazard and efficiency reduction over time as a result of increased opacity.
The real power is usually at a lower limit of production tolerance of advertised (stated) power.

Second-hand solar panels are of inferior quality. Installing home-made solar panels however is not recommended. ALso solar system need charge controller like RENOGY 20 AMP MPPT SOLAR CHARGE CONTROLLER, to protect battery from overcharging.
Moreover the area intended for solar array installation should be free of shade, with guaranteed access to direct sunlight.

It might happen however that a site be unshaded in summer and shaded in winter since in winter sun is lower and tends to cast longer shadows. The three main types of solar panels are not equally tolerant to shading.

What should also be noted is that solar vendors rarely share you all the pros and cons of using solar panels of a certain type. As a rule they do not provide you with the opportunity to make an informed decision what type of solar panels to use. Instead they find you unprepared by offering you a solar configuration, only taking solar panel price into account.

To find answers to important questions, such as:

– How performance of solar panels degrades in time

– If I decide to use second-hand solar panels, what solar panel type to choose;

– Which type solar panels are most tolerant to shading

– How much area you need for a solar array to install based on your specific energy needs and by considering 20% loss of space, and also be well-prepared for a solar vendor’s offer and visit, click here to discover more about our informational Solar Packages.

HOW DO I TAKE CARE OF MY PRECIOUS LITHIUM-ION BATTERY?

Now that you know the basics about the little chunk of power that keeps your phone going, here are some bite-sized practical tips to keep it healthy without driving yourself insane.

1. Yes, you can leave your phone plugged in overnight.

It is not the end of the world if you don't unplug your phone the second that it is charged. That charger is smarter than you give it credit for. Leaving your phone on the charger all night (or all day) is far better for your battery than running it down and charging it up.

2. Charge a little bit whenever you can.

Lithium-ion batteries don't respond well to being charged all the way up and then run all the way down. They take much better to little bits of charge here and there.

3. Yes, you can leave your laptop plugged in all the time.

Don't worry about overcharging the batteries in your gadgets, and especially don't worry about overcharging your laptop. What we just said about phones applies here, too. And on and on top of that, many laptops (most, in fact) are smart enough to cut the battery out of the charging equation entirely once it's full. The battery just sits there patiently until you need it or until it needs another little shock to top it off.

4. But maybe pop out your laptop battery while it's on the charger, if you can.

The biggest danger to your laptop battery—and your phone battery and your tablet battery—isn't overcharging, but heat. And with that in mind, it might be wise to pop out your laptop battery while you're plugged into the wall, if you can. As Andrew from iFixit explains:

The catch is that if you use the computer without the battery, you run the risk of a shutdown in the case of a power outage or clumsiness with the power adapter. Weigh your priorities.

If you can't or don't want to remove your laptop battery, at least make sure you've got good airflow. Don't block cooling vents. Maybe even pick up a fan with a stand.

5. Keep your batteries cool.

Speaking of temperature, make sure you don't leave your phone in a hot car all day. Or place it on top of your gaming PC. Or use it in a sauna. Try to avoid wireless charging if you can, because the waste-heat those chargers generate will also bake your battery. Also, beware of quick chargers. While your phone and charger are generally smart enough to minimize damage from high-voltage chargers, a lot of power super fast can generate extra heat. And if you have to store a gadget or its battery for a while, do it in a cool dry place.

6. Store batteries with a little bit of charge.

If you're storing batteries, you give them about a half a charge first. They'll slowly lose their charge over time, and if it drops into the true-zero danger zone, your battery will automatically trip its safety circuit and kill itself for real before it can become unstable.

7. Maybe go replaceable if you can.

If you're borderline insane about your battery life, consider opting for gadgets that have removable batteries when you can. For one thing, there's no faster way to "charge" a gadget than by swapping in a fully charged battery. And if you can't avoid these bad battery practices, at least you can start fresh by buying a fresh battery.

If you follow the most basic rules of thumb—don't go all the way from full to empty if you can avoid it and minimize the exposure to heat as best you can—you'll be fine. It's easy to obsess over battery care, to let charging superstitions metastasize into obsessive ritual. But just remember two things:

1. Your gadgets and their batteries are designed to keep you from ruining them. Lithium-ion batteries today are better, smarter, and more resilient than the nickel-metal hydrides of yesteryear.

2. Your batteries are going to die. No amount of obsessive care will save you from having to deal with a less capable battery a few years from now.

Invariably, we're all destined for the annoying endgame that comes when a battery degrades, and you're either tethered to a charger, buying a replacement battery, or buying a new gadget altogether. We've all been there before, and we'll be there again. So long as you follow the most basic of guidelines, you can maximize your distance from here to there. Sunjack USB Battery Charger is compatible with most smartphones, tablets or power packs. You will definitely enjoy the above mentioned LED indicator, knowing if something is wrong or if it is just charging, because as you know, you cannot open the batteries up and troubleshoot them like you would with a computer.

Emotional Intelligence in Business

Throughout history, scientists have tried to measure intelligence in many different ways and formats. These measures of intelligence have been used to rank people in ability, talent and other characteristics. For a business seeking new employees, finding highly intelligent candidates is key. But how much does intelligence truly relate to workplace success? Does emotional intelligence factor in, and if so, how?

IQ, EQ and Business

The business world is continuing to understand how to properly implement the use of EQ for the betterment of their personnel. But since Goleman first used the term in 1995, he has inspired countless organizations to take EQ into consideration. Since publishing his book, Goleman has spoken across the world on how good leaders have a high EQ.

Should You Buy New or Used Equipment for Your Business?

Deciding whether to buy new or used equipment is a choice more small businesses should be making. That’s because many small business leaders only buy used when they don’t have any other choice. Once they can afford new gear they never go back to pre-owned. While there isn’t much that can be done to magically afford new equipment, there’s no reason companies capable of buying new have to do so every time. In fact, buying pre-owned gear for your business is often preferable to new, as the following examples show:

Vehicles

Anyone who has ever bought a new car from the dealership knows how much the value drops as soon as it’s driven off the lot. With this in mind, there’s rarely a good reason why a business should be buying brand new automobiles when barely used options exist. This is especially the case with utility vehicles, as makes and models available through a pre-owned truck seller like Charter Trucks are typically thousands less than their later model counterparts. This, despite sometimes only having a few thousand miles on the odometer.

4 Important Attributes to Consider When Purchasing a Vehicle for Business

With so many options available to you, finding the right car for your business can be difficult. Since most small startups are working on a strict budget, they can’t afford to pay for all of the additional features that many manufacturers try and entice you to buy either. Fortunately, there are still some basic models that come fitted with the kind of technology you’ll need as standard. Here are 4 important attributes you should consider when purchasing a new vehicle.

Affordability

Affordability is one of the most important qualities of any company car and finding a vehicle that sits in one of the lower ranking insurance groups is the ideal way to attain this. Insurance groups range from 1-50, with those at the lower end of the scale being much cheaper to insure than those at the higher end. You can use sites like this to see where each make and model will be grouped.

Efficiency

The next step is to take a look under the hood, as this is where the most important technology lies. In order to compete with new hybrid vehicles or all-electrics that have gained popularity in recent years, many manufacturers have redeveloped their existing engines to be much more efficient. We see this with Ford and their EcoBoost range, as well as Vauxhall’s BlueInjection and SEAT’s Ecomotive technology. As well as increasing mpg, these also aim to decrease CO2 emissions so that you don’t have to pay as much in Vehicle Excise Duty.