Joe Lagowski plays PurePlay's Kidnappers back nine on NVisage's Neo E and flags two early bugs

Joe Lagowski has spent weeks testing NVisage's Neo E launch monitor. In a 25-minute video posted to his channel on November 2, he stopped testing and just played golf on it: nine holes of PurePlay's Kidnappers course, four days before PurePlay's early access opens November 6.

A monitor that works out of the box

Lagowski says the Neo E is supported "100% out of the box" in PurePlay, with NVisage partnering with the developer on the connection. That matches PurePlay's site, which lists NVisage among its nine officially integrated launch monitor brands, built in with each maker's own software kit.

The Neo E sells for $5,500 at U.S. retailers. It is a three-camera unit that sits beside the ball, reads any golf ball without markings and needs club stickers for its full club data. Dealers list it as working natively with GSPro and E6 Connect too.

In the video Lagowski points out that the Neo E measures face angle rather than estimating it, which he calls unusual for a side-mounted monitor. He says the only other unit he knows of that measures it is Foresight's GCQuad. On a thin heel strike off the 16th tee, the readout showed 3,163 rpm of spin and an impact point on the heel. He says both matched what he felt. His closing verdict: it "performed absolutely flawlessly," and he never questioned the data.

The round

He played the back nine from the members' tees with a slight breeze, green speed set to 12 on the Stimpmeter and five-foot gimmes. A neck injury kept him to punch drivers most of the way. One four-wood still came off at 154.6 mph of ball speed.

The software got most of the airtime. Lagowski says his PurePlay scores land closer to what he shoots outdoors than his GSPro scores do. He likes the high, optimal and low putting lines, the slope heat map and the F3 camera view, which he calls his "new favorite key." Deep rough came with a 50 to 84% distance penalty on the 17th, so a 141-yard shot played like 188. He says that is fair: "Punish me."

What he wants fixed

Lagowski says the build he played had just come out of closed beta, so treat it as pre-release. He found two problems. Ball speed showed in kilometers per hour even with imperial units selected, and the heat-map hotkey only works while its menu panel is open. He says he will pass both on to PurePlay's team.

Why it matters for early access

PurePlay lists Kidnappers, based on Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand's Hawke's Bay, as an unofficial course that is still being built and is awaiting a license. Nothing on that page promises it will be playable on November 6. We covered the course when Hosel Rocket Golf flew over it in October.

His bigger prediction is about online tour events. He expects the same players to stay near the top, but he thinks PurePlay will make ball striking, chipping and putting count for more than they do in GSPro or SGT, where he says bad putts too often go unpunished. If you own a Neo E or another officially supported monitor, you can test that claim from November 6. If your monitor isn't on PurePlay's list, Burdie Golf's ProTee VX test and our PurePlay vs. Infinite Tees vs. GSPro comparison cover the alternatives.