Five years ago, launch monitors were specialty tools. They were, in terms of price, complexity and accessibility, out of reach for us “normal folk.” That wasn’t necessarily a problem, since we normal folk wouldn’t have been able to set up or operate one, or even make heads or tails of what the damn thing was telling us, anyway.
Today, however, personal launch monitors are downright mainstream. They’re simpler to operate and present data in a much more digestible form.
Which brings us to a 28-year-old global company that you’ve probably never heard of.
GolfJoy is the launch monitor arm of China’s Shenzen Hengtaixin Technology Company. It touts over 400,000 platform users worldwide, with over 10,000 connected devices, 160 flagship showrooms, more than 120 distributors, 650 commercial installations and, most significantly, over 270 pieces of protected intellectual property.
Why is that significant? Pretty simple, really.
GolfJoy is pushing its chips in and betting that the next phase of the launch monitor industry won’t be won by whoever builds the most expensive technology or elaborate products. It believes the winner will be whoever makes that high-end technology accessible to more golfers.
For “normal folk” everywhere, I sincerely hope they’re right.
Who is this GolfJoy, anyway?
As we said, it’s probably a company you’ve never heard of.
The Hengtaixin Company was first established in 1998 as a practice range equipment supplier. Its products included artificial putting green solutions, ball washers and dispensers and a patented 3D hitting mat. By 2012, it reestablished itself as a technology brand, specializing in golf-specific sensors and software, along with golf simulators.
Hengtaixin established the GolfJoy brand in 2019 and opened its U.S. headquarters in 2024 in Southern California. Today, GolfJoy is a full-service launch monitor provider, offering everything from commercial systems and driving range solutions to home setups and a full-featured personal launch monitor, the Spica 3.
“We want to blaze our own trail here,” GolfJoy’s U.S. Business Development Manager Christian Anderson tells MyGolfSpy. “It used to be stupid expensive or stupid cheap to get into a launch monitor. We want to kill that area in between.”
So you could say that GolfJoy is a challenger brand trying to redefine the launch monitor category. However, the problem with trying to kill that “area in between” lies with a question many of you might be asking right now.
“Yeah, but is it accurate?”
Well, is it accurate?
That’s a question we posed right away to Anderson. His answer spoke volumes.
“Compared to what?”
All launch monitors, be they camera-based or radar-based, rely on algorithms to extrapolate most of their performance metrics. That’s not to say they guess, but they do estimate.
Some estimate better than others.
So before we can determine whether GolfJoy’s launch monitors are accurate, we should probably take a moment and try to define what accuracy really means. Does it reflect the reality of a shot to the 90th percentile? The 95th percentile? How do you decide and, more importantly, how do you know?
“The industry had this come-to-Jesus moment that TrackMan 4 is the litmus test for accuracy,” explains Anderson. “Trackman is seen as the industry standard right now because it’s used on Tour.”
As golfers, we trust what we see on tour broadcasts. We trust what we see in retail fitting bays and we even trust the numbers we see at golf simulator centers. Anything outside that circle or outside of a “recognized” brand, however, is often met with skepticism.
“We’ll hit thousands and thousands of golf balls. Then we have someone physically walk out there and tape the distances to verify our distances are accurate,” Anderson says. “We test with professional golfers and with robots. We’ve tested side by side against GC Quad and Trackman, and our data is right in line with theirs.”
Everyone wants accuracy, but most of us don’t know how to quantify it. In the world that matters – meaning the one between our ears – our idea of accuracy is mostly a matter of trust.
“Trackman is seen as the industry standard,” says Anderson. “That’s mostly because of the Tour.”
GolfJoy and the search for validation
Golfers tend to judge accuracy emotionally rather than scientifically for one simple reason: emotional decisions are easy to reach and even easier to defend. If the numbers match the numbers we expect, then it’s accurate. If it doesn’t, well…
Reputation, tour use and third-party validation all matter, as does familiarity. All those retail bays have GC Quads, right? There must be a reason.
At this point in its journey, GolfJoy knows its products deliver what it defines as a high degree of accuracy. What it needs is third-party validation.
Its Spica 3 launch monitor, for example, is a vision-based photometric system built around three high-speed cameras, synchronized lighting, a dedicated processing engine and GolfJoy’s proprietary AI-based algorithms. To gain the validation it needs, the company has partnered with the China LPGA Tour and is a co-sponsor of the Volvo China Open. In 2025 is signed on as an official partner for the Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship. It’s also the official launch monitor of Ultimate Long Drive.
“The partnerships we have now, working with professional tours and stuff like that is good,” Anderson says. “But at the end of the day, it still feels like it’s paid.”
We’ll see how GolfJoy stacks up in MyGolfSpy’s upcoming personal launch monitor testing, but we can say initial, informal testing is promising. As advertised, the Spica 3 is easy to use. Its basic functionality is very similar to that of a GC Quad. You can see the important numbers right on the unit’s touch screen, including carry and total distance, launch angle and direction, descent angle and all the spin numbers you could ever want. Additionally, the GolfJoy Pro app opens up a whole new world of data, simulations and games, all of which can be played at the driving range.
Yeah, but is it accurate?
That question won’t go away, will it?
For the likes of you and me, the question shouldn’t be, “Is it exactly right?”
The question really should be, “Is it accurate enough to help me get better?”
Official MyGolfSpy testing will tell a deeper tale, but my informal driving range experience has been enlightening. Setting up the Spica 3 is simple and using the touchscreen is a breeze. In action, it operates very much like any GC Quad you’ll see in a retail hitting bay.
As for the numbers, all I can tell you is the results matched my expectations. My seven-iron did what I expected, as did my nine-iron. Wedges, metal woods and every other club in the bag did likewise. I did find a gapping issue between my five- and my six-irons, but that wasn’t really a surprise.
Ultimately, I could use these results to help me understand what my swing was doing. There’s enough data to evaluate slight swing changes, compare clubs and, ultimately, use on course.
One feature that particularly impressed me was its speed. The Spica 3 had the results of the swing on the screen literally before I could turn my head back down to look at it. GolfJoy’s literature says response time is designed to be 0.3 seconds. I can’t verify that specific number, but whatever it was, it was fast. And impressive.
When you bring the GolfJoy Pro app into the equation, things get interesting. The app gives you a driving range view and simulated ball flight. Additionally, you have access to several more pieces of ball and club data (when using club stickers). Also, the app can access your device’s camera and record a rear or side view of your swing and synchronize the video to your ball flight.
And speaking driving ranges…
One of the things I enjoy most about these brand profile stories, besides digging into a company’s ethos, is learning the scope of its offerings. GolfJoy’s reach is broad, including overhead launch monitors, personal and commercial simulator kits and a unique driving range package called the GDA21.
“It’s an all-in-one, ready-to-go solution that’s easy to set up,” says Anderson. “Our message to driving range owners is that you don’t need to spend $100,000 with Trackman or Inrange to get this started.”
The GolfJoy GDA21 is a fully self-contained unit. It includes a Spica 3 launch monitor, all the hardware and processing equipment and a 21.5-inch HD touchscreen display. It also features a 120 frames per second high-speed swing camera and full connectivity to larger displays and the internet. Outfitting driving ranges is the most obvious market. However, Anderson says golf academies, coaching centers and indoor golf centers are emerging markets.
Additionally, he says, it makes for a dandy home simulator package.
“This is for the guy who doesn’t have a launch monitor, projector, screen or a separate computer. They don’t need any of that. They just need power, a mat and a net.”
The GDA21 offers basic practice feedback and shot tracing, along with simulated games and course play. For the driving range market, it’s a product that’s easy to install bay-by-bay.
“My sales guys will put one in their car and do a demo at a driving range,” says Anderson. Each self-contained unit runs about $11,500, and GolfJoy offers the driving range owner per-bay financing package.
And speaking of pricing…
You knew we’d get back to that.
GolfJoy isn’t bashful about claiming its Spica 3 is every bit as accurate, detailed and robust as a $25,000 TrackMan package or an $18,000 GC Quad. That the Spica 3 sits at $3,200 makes that comparison, on one level, fairly unbelievable. $6,000 GC3 from Foresight would be a more apt comparison, but Anderson is sticking firm.
“Once people start seeing more of the GolfJoy story and see the validity of our data, they’ll be like, okay, this isn’t some random band,” he says. “We’re hoping to be seen as one of the top-tier launch monitors, not an entry-level one. We don’t want to be lumped in with the Rhapsodos, the Mevos or the Blue Tees. We’re not in that category.”
Again, on the surface, a $3,200 launch monitor, no matter who makes it, going toe-to-toe with industry standards that cost six to seven times as much simply does not compute. The eyeballs can read it, but the brain can’t accept it. At some point, however, accuracy stops being a technological challenge and starts becoming a matter of trust.
GolfJoy is out to show the world that the traditional relationship between price, reputation, accuracy and trust is no longer valid.
“Launch monitors are on a very similar path as GPS and rangefinders were on ten years ago,” Anderson explains. “Back when I was playing competitively, only the rich kids had them.”
Now, everyone has them. Features you used to pay through the nose for, like slope, are now standard in virtually every price range. Are we starting to witness the same shift in launch monitor technology? Not surprisingly, Anderson says absolutely.
“I think that within three to five years, everyone’s going to have some way of generating performance metrics while they’re practicing.”
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