Five years ago, launch monitors were specialized tools. They were, in terms of price, complexity and accessibility, out of our reach for us “normal people”. It wasn’t necessarily a problem, since us normal people wouldn’t have been able to set it 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 truly mainstream. They are simpler to operate and present the data in a much more digestible form.
Which brings us to a 28-year-old global company you’ve probably never heard of.
GolfJoy is the launch monitor arm of China’s Shenzen Hengtaixin Technology Company. It features more than 400,000 platform users worldwide with more than 10,000 connected devices, 160 state-of-the-art showrooms, more than 120 distributors, 650 commercial installations and, more significantly, more than 270 pieces of protected intellectual property.
Why is it so significant? Pretty simple, really.
GolfJoy pushes its chips and bets that the next phase of the launch monitor industry will not be won by whoever builds the most expensive technology or elaborate products. I believe the winner will be whoever makes high-end technology accessible to more golfers.
On behalf of “normal people” everywhere, I sincerely hope they are right.
Who is this GolfJoy, anyway?
Like we said, it’s probably a company you’ve never heard of.
Hengtaixin Company was established in 1998 as a practice equipment supplier. Its products include artificial putting green solutions, ball washers and dispensers and a patented 3D hitting mat. In 2012, it re-established itself as a technology brand, specializing in specific golf sensors and software, with golf simulators.
Hengtaixin established the GolfJoy brand in 2019 and opened its headquarters in the United States in 2024 in Southern California. Today, GolfJoy is a full-service launch monitor supplier offering everything from commercial systems and driving range solutions to home setups and a complete personal launch monitor, the Spica 3.
“We want to make our own way here,” GolfJoy’s US Business Development Manager, Christian Anderson, tells MyGolfSpy. “Usually it was 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 that is trying to redefine the launch monitor category. However, the problem with trying to kill that “zone in between” lies with a question that many of you may be asking right now.
“Yes, but it is accurate?”
well, is it is that accurate?
That’s a question we immediately got to Anderson. His answer spoke volumes.
“Compared to what?”
All launch monitors, whether camera-based or radar-based, rely on algorithms to extrapolate most of their performance metrics. It is not to say that they to guess but they do estimate.
Some rate better than others.
So before you can determine if GolfJoy 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 90th percentile shot? The 95th percentile? How do you decide and, more importantly, how do you know?
“The industry has had this moment of coming to Jesus that TrackMan 4 is the test again for accuracy,” explains Anderson. “Trackman is seen as the industry standard now because it’s used on (the PGA) Tour.”
As golfers, we trust what we see on Tour broadcasts. We trust what we see in the golf club bays and we also trust the numbers we see in golf simulation centers. Anything outside that circle or outside of a “recognized” brand, however, is often met with skepticism.
“We hit thousands and thousands of golf balls. So we have someone physically walk and tape the distances to make sure our distances are accurate,” says Anderson. “We’ve tested it with professional golfers and with robots. We’ve tested it 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—that is, the one between our ears—our idea of accuracy is mostly a matter of trust.
“Trackman is seen as the industry standard,” says Anderson. “It’s mostly because of the Tour.”
GolfJoy is 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 is accurate. If not, well…
Reputation, use of the Tour and third-party validation matter, as does familiarity. All those sales bays have GC Quads right? There must be a reason.
At this point in his journey, GolfJoy knows that its products provide what it defines as a high degree of precision. 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 proprietary AI-based algorithms from GolfJoy. To get 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, he signed on as an official partner for the Notah Begay III Junior National Golf Championship. It is also the official launch monitor of Ultimate Long Drive.
“The partnerships we have now, working with professional tours and things like that, it’s good,” Anderson says. “But at the end of the day, it still feels like it paid off.”
We’ll see how GolfJoy fares in MyGolfSpy’s upcoming personal launch monitor test, but we can say that the initial, informal test 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 touchscreen, including carry and total distance, launch angle and direction, descent angle and all the spin numbers you could ever want. In addition, the GolfJoy Pro app opens up a whole new world of data, simulations and games, which can be played on the driving range.
Yes, but is it accurate?
This question won’t go away, will it?
For you and me, the question should not be: “Is it exactly right?”
The question should really be, “Is it accurate enough to help you improve?”
The official MyGolfSpy test will tell a deeper story, but my informal driving range experience was enlightening. Setting up the Spica 3 is simple and using the touchscreen is a breeze. In action, it operates much like any GC Quad you’ll see in a sales bay.
As for the numbers, all I can tell you is that the results match my expectations. My 7-iron did what I expected as well as my 9-iron. Wedges, metalwoods and every other club in the bag did the same. I did find a gap problem between my 5 and my 6 irons, but it wasn’t really a surprise.
Ultimately, I could use these results to help me understand what my swing was doing. There is enough data to evaluate slight swing changes, compare clubs and ultimately use them on the course.
One feature that particularly impressed me was its speed. The Spica 3 had the swing results on the screen literally before I could turn my head to look at it. GolfJoy’s literature says the response time is designed to be 0.3 seconds. I can’t verify that specific number, but whatever it was, it was fast. It’s impressive.
When you bring the GolfJoy App Pro into the equation, things get interesting. The app gives you a view of the driving range and simulated ball flight. In addition, you have access to many more pieces of ball and club data (when you use club stickers). Additionally, the app can access your device’s camera and record a rear or side view of your swing and sync the video to your ball flight.
Speaking of driving tracks…
One of the things I like most about these brand profile stories, besides digging into a company’s ethos, is learning about the purpose of their offerings. GolfJoy’s reach is extensive, 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 track owners is that you don’t have to spend $100,000 with Trackman or Inrange to get this started.”
U GolfJoy GDA21 is a fully self-contained unit. It includes a Spica 3 launch monitor, all hardware and processing equipment and a 21.5-inch HD touchscreen display. It also features a 120-frames-per-second swing camera and full connectivity to larger displays and the Internet. Driving range equipment is the most obvious market. However, Anderson says golf academies, coaching centers and indoor golf centers are emerging markets.
Plus, 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 that. They just need power, a mat and a network.”
The GDA21 offers basic practice feedback and shot tracking with simulated games and course play. For the driving range market, it is a product that is easy to install bay-by-bay.
“My salespeople will put one in their car and do a demo at a driving range,” says Anderson. Each self-contained unit runs around $11,500 and GolfJoy offers the driving range owner financing package per bay.
Speaking of prices…
You know we’ll get back to it.
GolfJoy isn’t shy about claiming its Spica 3 is as accurate, detailed and robust as a $25,000 Trackman package or an $18,000 GC Quad. That the Spica 3 is priced at $3,200 makes the comparison, on one level, quite incredible. A $6,000 GC3 from Foresight would be a more apt comparison, but Anderson stands firm.
“Once people start to see more of the history of GolfJoy and see the validity of our data, they will be like, OK, this is not a random band. We hope to be seen as one of the first level launch monitors, not an entry level. We do not want to be combined with the Rapsodos, the Mevos or the Blue Tees. “We are not in this 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 more simply is not calculated. The eyeballs can read but the brain cannot accept. At some point, however, accuracy ceases to be a technological challenge and begins to become 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 to GPS and range finders that were in 10 years ago,” explains Anderson. “When I was playing competitively, only rich kids had it.”
Now, everyone has it. Features you used to pay through the nose for, like slope, are now standard in almost every price range.
Are we starting to witness the same change in launch monitor technology? It’s not surprising, Anderson says absolutely.
“I think in three to five years, everyone is going to have some way of generating performance metrics while they’re practicing.”
The place You’ve never heard of this company, but it might just be the next big thing in launch monitors appeared first MyGolfSpy.
