OptiShot 2 Golf Simulator for Home - Portable Indoor Golf Training System with Swing Analyzer | Perfect for Home Practice, Backyard Setup & Virtual Golf Games

My 9 year old daughter has been playing Golf since she was 3 years old and spends most of her time in the Golf course or the range. Last year I splurged and had a Putting, chipping green and also a Bunker installed in our back yard. That allowed us to spend more time at home and also decreased our practice time in half. I said to her the only thing missing is a Virtual Golf course.The other Virtual Golf products costs from 1500 to 50,000. so when I saw all the good reviews from fellow golfers I decided to try it. I also read the negative reviews of Golfers with Clubs that have a dark sole, irregular shape that causes misreads but I knew how to deal with that.PROS1. Ease of setup. All you need to do is take it out of the box, plug the USB to your laptop and run the Optishot Application. That's it.2. Calibration of individual clubs. You can use the default settings but I would not trust it. It will ask you to take some slow swings in a square, open and closed position. You only do this once for each golf set. You can have several golf sets. Then you will have to edit each Club and adjust the length and loft primarily.3. Accuracy. My daughter was swinging and hitting to the Virtual driving range within 20 minutes. We setup a Swing speed Radar beside the Mat to compare the accuracy. After hitting about 500 balls, we can see that most of the time it is within 2 mph +/- or the same as the Swing Speed Radar. That means it is accurate enough for me.4. Playing Golf Courses. She spends most of her time trying increase her distance and accuracy on the Optishot Driving range. Then when she is ready, she switched to the game. In playing the course mode, you can leave the default settings or you can configure it to be more realistic. You can adjust so many factors like the speed of the green, fairway and rough. You can configure wind speed and rough. There are so many more you can change. This is what I like. The courses are very realistic indeed. I sometimes use a projector on to an impact screen, or on the TV. But you still need the laptop obviously.5. Saving money. Since we got this we only go to the course once a week instead of everyday.CONS:1. The only struggle you may have with this is if your club cannot be detected. My daughter had that issue with her Woods. During the calibration phase, people think they need to take full swings. You should not! You just need to chip and move the club slowly so that the sensors can tell if the face is open, square or closed.Since the sole of her woods are black, I got the aluminum insulation tape and cut a strip about 4 inches long and half an inch thick and taped it to the edge of the sole of the club below the club face. I made sure that it lined up perfectly with the face. It worked immediately. I have done this with some Irons I have that are not all silver underneath. Works great. We tried woods that are silver and flat soled, and they all work without tape. So we decided to have an indoor set and an outdoor set which are her regular clubs.SUMMARY:There are more expensive Virtual golf products out there. They track the ball so you can get more information and more accurate results. They can tell if you hit fat or thin so it will adjust the flight of the ball. But I don't need that. I can see the ball flying and can hear if we hit fat or thin. When we have any shot like that we delete that swing.When we use Foam balls, we have to adjust the yardage settings. We reduce the yardage by 10 percent. The club swings faster when it hits a foam ball than with real balls from what we can see. We went to a pro shop with a Trackman and compared her swing speed, and the average swing speed is very close. Also, you have to configure it for hitting a real golf ball, foam ball or no ball so that it can accurately measure your hit.My daughter is a World champion golfer and she loves her Optishot 2. She has more time for herself and has more of a life now outside the Golf course.It is a super convenient, and great training tool. If you are having issues with detecting your clubs, let me know and I will try to help you get the most out of your Optishot.Happy Golfing.>>>>UPDATE after 3 years of using it<<<<