Welcome James. Hope you enjoy the Team Titleist community. This is always a hot topic as you can read if you search older posts. Everyone has their favorites and good reasons why they use them. I personally rely most heavily on a cheap GPS, the Bushnell Neo+ which gives me basic yardages at most courses and I don't have to have line-of-sight to know the distance to the greens. Some courses are not in their database and getting yardages to points that are not on the green can be problematic. I also have a Nikon CoolShot which is at the lower end of the cost scale and it works fine for me on those few occasions where my GPS does not work. It doesn't lock on as well from longer range than the high-end models but I usually just need it for 150 yards or closer. Since you already purchased yours, I would say just keep using it until you find reason to upgrade. Have fun out there.

I use a Bushnell V4 Slope Edition. It's a year or so old now, but I always used previous Bushnell models before it, for 6 or 7 years. Quality is excellent compared to a couple of the cheaper ones some of my buddies have. I don't really know the brands, but I know they aren't Bushnell. They always seem to have trouble getting a good reading or locking in on targets. I rarely have that issue. I have slope, but frankly, I don't really think I need it. I hardly ever switch the slope on when playing my home course, which I play on average 4-5 days a week. I have enough local knowledge to know how much extra or less I need to hit a particular shot for up or downhill approaches. I've played this course close to 800 times over the past 5 years I've been a member. On occasion I will use the slope feature at other courses, though.

I trust my Bushnell on any shot. My buddies seem to always get incorrect reading on theirs. On par 3s, they wait for me to shoot the distance to the flag and backside of any bunkers that need to be cleared. They ask what I got for distance. Then they might shoot it again with their own rangefinder. If the measurement doesn't match with what I measured, they will inevitably go with the distance I got.

Leupold. Great warranty and customer service!

In my opinion, Bushnell and Leopold are the best. I wanted to upgrade to the Bushnell XE last year, but my Z6 is so awesome that I cannot justify buying a new one. My advice is to try to find a Z6, extremely accurate, locks on the target easily and is probably not very expensive at the moment...

I also just received a Blue Tees range finder for Christmas...I’m 47 and just getting back into golf (however before I was never really serious about it so you could say I’m a beginner) like you I wanted something inexpensive to start because I’m not sure how much I will use it. It seems like good quality with decent reviews and I figure if I want to upgrade down the road than this Blue Tee was a good starting point.

Leupold is the best in my opinion!!!
MADE IN THE USA!!!

Cheers,
Dr. K