Short review: If you do not plan to take outside, do not have 16ft of space to work with for a Mevo + IMO this should be the only consideration at the less than $3000 price point. I spent a ton of time researching every unit out there and you are getting one of the best units on the market for $1500 + $500 a year subscription. My only other real consideration was Skytrak+ and Uneekor Eye mini lite. Personally I was too gun shy to purchase Skytrak+ due to my first unit not reading so many shots for other people, so who knows their units might be just as good. As for Uneekor, I decided to save $1300 on the unit and pay the extra subcription fees for the LPi. Mevo+ didn't work for my space or I very well could have went with that unit. But after using the LPi I couldn't be happier with my decision.
The story (review will be below): I am about a 10 handicap and have owned a Skytrak since 2019. I ran TGC 2019 and the Skytrak on a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU and RTX 2070 graphics card. The unit worked great for me, but anyone over a 15 handicap good luck. When I played, I would get 1-2 no reads per round. When the vast majority of other people played it would be 2-3 no reads per hole. I talked with Skytrak on every possibility and couldn't find any resolution within the time I had it. Suffice it to say that's just not very fun for me or the other people playing. So finally, I just got to the point where it was time to upgrade the simulator. My only dealbreaker on a unit, my wife being able to register 7/10 shots. Anything less, and the unit was getting sent back. I emphasize this point because I really didn't see too many other people post about this issue when looking to upgrade their unit, so I really wanted to emphasize if this is a problem for someone else, I can say the LPi is your answer!
The review: Shipping: Bought the unit on sale for $1500 at Play Better, unit was shipped and received in two days and I couldn't be happier with Play Better, I will definitely use them in the future.
Setup: Unit came in with everything you need for whichever setup you choose. The setup went extremely smooth. I read the instruction manual in full which took about 5 minutes. I unpackaged the unit, hooked it to ethernet and power and turned the unit on. I scanned the QR code downloaded the Foresight app and made the Foresight account. I loaded the device on my phone and then I loaded up to my laptop (which was upgraded from my previous system, i9-13900HX CPU, GTX 4080 laptop GPU, 32 GB ram, 1 TB NVME SSD). The download for FSX Play, FSX 2020 and FSX Pro was about 20 minutes or so. and I had to link the gold trial to my account. It took about 5-10 minutes for the install and to set the dimensions for the room size. Unit hooked right up to the software with no issue, unlike Skytrak which always felt like a chore (to be fair once it loaded it stayed online pretty well but would always have to be reset midway through a round. ) But with Foresight, GS Pro or my phone, the connection has been seamless on startup and has never shut down unexpectedly.
First range: I hit about 20 balls on the range and everything seemed to be dead on. Something that I feel like may get overlooked is the speed at which it registers shots. This was so much faster than Skytrak. Also, I felt with Skytrak my shots went too straight, I knew I had left the face a little open or pulled the shot a little bit but to my surprise on Skytrak it went fairly straight. That doesn't happen anymore with the LPi. The ball goes exactly where it felt like it went.
First round: I played the executive Boulders course for my first round and man, this is such a step up from TGC 2019. I think the graphics are still better on TGC but the smoothness of FSX play and the realism of the short chips and putts are on another level. TGC just didn't match the real feel as FSX Play. My one major complaint with FSX Play and the LPi is the cost of courses. $500 for Pebble beach and other courses after you are spending $500 a year on a subscription just seems wrong to me. This would be the case if you were to buy the QC3 as well for $7000. I would rather them include all of their courses on a secondary subscription for $500 but basically any course I would want is $250 and above. So instead of buying a course I just got a subscription to GSpro due to all the rave reviews.
First round GSPro: I never tried GSPro before because Skytrak didn't adopt their platform and I didn't want to use a third party to hookup. GSpro is awesome, feels just as good if not better than FSX Play with all the courses that you would have to pay for on FSX Play. I think the graphics are relatively equal, but I like the UI a lot more for GSPro. Either one is a lot of fun, but I would much rather pay GSpro $250 for 1700 courses than pay Foresight at minimum $150 for one.
Final test: My wife was now up, she really struggled to register shots on the Skytrak, maybe 3/10 or so. She took 20 shots, 5 were terr...
