Blue Tees Player+ GPS Speaker
Blue Tees Golf initially released their magnetic Bluetooth Player speaker. I actually found this to be one of the better golf Bluetooth speakers I’ve ever seen, and by a mile. Then with a little bit of technological magic, the Blue Tees Player+ speaker was introduced featuring a touch screen that pairs with an interactive app on your phone to provide you GPS distances for over 40,000 golf courses. Between great sound quality, robust functionality, accurate yardages, and a solid price point, the Player+ is a great all-in-one golf device!
Out of the Box
I’m not going to lie, there’s a bit of work involved in setting up the Blue Tees Player+ speaker. The Bluetooth speaker portion of the operation is very easy and intuitive like pairing any speaker with your device.
For GPS functionality, there’s a little bit of work. We learned this the hard way the first time out and spent the first few holes getting started. (That’s on me…) First, you have to download the Blue Tees Golf app in your device’s app store. (Anything Apple or Android.) You need this to register the Player+ for GPS and to create a Blue Tees Golf account. Then to access the GPS database, you’ll need to signup for a subscription with Blue Tees with the first year being free ($49.99/year after that). You can also purchase a two-year plan for $25/year. This subscription/payment can be managed right through your app store account.
You can, and should, setup your full profile to benefit from all of the application’s features. Once you complete all of your signup/profile activities, now you have to search for and select your course in the app. It’s pretty smooth sailing from here. All you need to do is select how many holes you’re playing and which tee box you’re playing from.
Features
There are a number of important features in the Blue Tees Player+ speaker. From a general speaker perspective, the Player+ has an IPX7 waterproof rating, 100-foot range, a magnetic strip for convenient mounting, and “Links Party pairing” (you can pair with another Player+ speaker to share between two different speakers). The speaker also has a “Radical Deep” bass and a 360º audio experience. In regards to GPS, the Player+ features a smooth touch screen display, front/center/back distance, “dynamic hazards” (distance to hazards), driving distance, score keeping, and the ability to get audible distances.
I also want to point out that the Player+ is stated to have 10+ hours of battery life. My testing hasn’t pushed it that long yet, but I can say it made it through a long, cold round just fine. On top of that, the Player+ also works as a power bank so you can keep your phone charged on the course. Just keep in mind that this will use up more of the Player+’s battery life.
On-Course Performance
Let’s start first and foremost by discussing the Blue Tees Player+’s performance as a speaker. I’m not kidding when I tell you that the Player+ sounds incredible. When I compare it to my “premium audio brand” portable Bluetooth speaker that my family uses, it more than holds its own. In fact, I would argue that there are often times I think it exceeds the “premium brand” speaker. The sound experience is legitimately very, very good.
From a GPS perspective, I found the Player+ to be dead on when compared to a reliable GPS watch and my rangefinder. The ability to switch between screens is smooth and easy, and between the speaker’s screen and the Blue Tees app, you get an excellent picture of the hole in front of you with crucial distances.
My experience with the Blue Tees Golf app is that it’s visually nice, easy to interact with in terms of dragging and dropping targets, and has a lot of functionality. I will say that I felt like utilizing the score/stat keeping functionality could get a bit cumbersome and suck up a bit of time. My biggest benefits from the app were definitely the hole visualizations. Being able to visualize hazards and run outs, then dragging and dropping targets makes a huge difference. It makes gathering that data much quicker than shooting targets with a rangefinder.
Final Thoughts – Blue Tees Player+ GPS Speaker
At $199, the Blue Tees Player+ is a pretty solid value when you consider it’s a Bluetooth magnetic speaker with high-quality sound AND a premium GPS all in one. (It looks like full price is $249, but I’ve only ever seen it for $199 on Blue Tees Golf’s website.) You could easily spend that much or more on either type of device individually. All I know is that I’ve been really impressed by the Player+ so far and plan on making using it regularly moving forward. Oh, good news for fans of the signature Blue Tees Golf “blue” color! The Player+ is available in that colorway as well.
