# Swingbyte 2



## talksalot81 (Oct 13, 2013)

*Overview:*

I thought I would share my recent experience with the Swingbyte 2 device. A quick recap of the marketing info, for those who do not know it already. This is a small device which clips onto the shaft of your club, just below the grip. It communicates, using bluetooth, with your android or IoS device (whether phone or ipad). The device then records the sequence of your swing, giving information such as speed, plane, face angle which is then uploaded to the phone and also the internet so that you can access the information later and from other devices.

The device comes in a neat little package and also includes a (very short) cable and (very brief) guide. It needed charged (just by USB) before being used. I found that I needed to go onto the swingbyte website to read the more in-depth guide to actually get myself going. I downloaded the app for my android phone and, with a bit of prodding and flitting back to the online guide, it started recording swings. It is necessary to put in the information relating to each club you use (it can store lots of clubs, so you only need do this once for each club), most importantly being the club number and the length (from which it calculates the clubhead speed).

*Initial 'play':*

So, 6 iron put into the info, connected device to phone (android in my case) and a few swings. Since it stays connected and you don't tell it that you want it to record, it identifies a swing by the impact. This can be the ball or I just tried it by swinging on a wooden board (so the 'clunk' as i hit the board, registered the swing). When the device registers the swing, it gives a beep and, a few seconds later, it is available to view. Initial impressions were good so I was looking forward to getting it onto the practice ground.

*Range testing:*

A couple of days later, all connected up again and hitting some balls. The good stuff was that I was able to identify an issue with my swing - it was easy to see that my downward path was much much narrower than my takeaway. Now, it took me to interpret the following (you cannot explicitly see it, nor does the software tell you this is the case) but I could then see that I was moving everything forward from the top. The result was that I have a very steep angle of attack which explains a lot of my issues. At this point, I wish I could go on and tell you about monitoring of the club face angle - this was what I was working on, attempting to get square at the top - but I cannot. The first of my big issues is that the device tends to 'move' on the shaft. This is something that various users have reported and I was not convinced - I had felt that some tape on the shaft would surely sort this. However, I could not stop the rotation after a few swings. What this meant was that the angles the device gave me were simply all over the place. It did not damage the monitoring of swing speed nor the path measurement, but face angle (and thus things like whether I had a hook/fade/etc) just didn't work for me. The second big problem for me was the reliability of recording. I would get a good feeling, make a good swing and it wouldn't record. I tried to have the phone in my pocket, on the ground, on a stand and I just couldn't get a reliable recording. I think I was probably picking up 6 out of 10 swings - not awful but it drove me a bit nuts because I always seemed to miss the ones I really wanted to record! A final little niggle was that the 'plug' protecting the USB socket would pop out almost every swing - so I was forever having to put it back.

*Conclusion:*

The Swingbyte 2 seemed to be nicely made but niggles with it rotating and the USB protector detracted when it was put into use. The software seemed very nice, for a scientist by trade, I thought it gave a lot of nice information and was not difficult to use. This was unfortunately diminished by the device rotating and compromising some of the info and by the lack of reliability in recording. Overall, this is a very interesting device, it shows a lot of promise and I can see a future iteration could be a superb tool for a serious golfer. In the present form, the user will need to appreciate that there are some limitations.

*Final note:
*
I chose the Swingbyte 2 rather than the Skypro based mostly on the android compatibility (I do not have either iphone or ipad). In the future I may well try the skypro device but the need to purchase an apple device, with which to use it, makes that a rather expensive affair. Also, I have subsequently bought a swing speed radar and get somewhat lower speed numbers than the Swingbyte 2 provided - at this point, I do not know which of these devices to trust.


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