TruTest Digital Test Strip Reader

[Spiderman]

Anyone have any experience with this?  Is so, is it any good?

[Renee]

I have this.   When I first got it, I compared the readings with my dealer's readings.  Alkalinity reading wasn't even close.  PH & Bromine were really close.  I called and complained to the company.  They sent me new strips, and it seems to be working better....it matches the color strip readings.  I still need to take it into my dealer though, and compare it to their readings.   I was impressed at how well the company was willing to work with me.   I think that since it is a new product, they are still "tweaking" it a little bit to get accurate readings.
--renee

[wmccall]

I got mine from Doc's site.  My experience has been good.  My PH and ALk track together fairly well, so with this device I have no trouble getting them both into range.

[Webini]

I got mine from Doc's site.  My experience has been good.  My PH and ALk track together fairly well, so with this device I have no trouble getting them both into range.

Same here.  There was a bad batch of test strips at the beginning and the ALK was off.  No issues since - it tracks to my Taylor kit so well I don't use the Taylor any more except to test Calcium.

The WAF is high.

[Tyheethan]

For those of us who had not heard of the TruTest Digital Test Strip Reader, here is a link:

http://www.aquachek.com/

[D.P. Roberts]

Glad to hear about this. I'd been planning on getting one, and the accuracy of the test strips was my big concern.

[Brewman]

Glad to hear the new strips are more accurate.  Mine are all over the place.  One thing I have noticed is that the unit eats batteries more than i'd expect.
Not sure if it's me forgetting to turn it off or what, but last time I went to use it, it was dead again.

[squale]

Is there other digital test systems in this price range?  like anything you can get for home use such as they use at the dealer to test the water?

[Brewman]

My dealer uses some system that hooks into his PC, and provides a detailed water anaylsis printout, including how much of what chemical to add if to balance the water.
 And it uses re-agents sealed in little plastic vials.  I can't imagine that system would be anywhere near the aqua check price, if it's even available to consumers.
  If there are any other inexpensive electronic stuff out there, I haven't heard of it.

[squale]

well I just got ordered the Aquacheck digital system off ebay... $41 for the tester with 25 strips, then another $8 for another 50 strips, plus $6 shipping.  Not a bad price.

Now I just need to find a good online place for chemicals.

[SugarBear]

There is.  I have the Lamotte PC4A.  It uses reagents and is very reliable.  It's a hand held device.  I understand that they just came out with another reader around the same price ($130-150).  You can check it out at http://www.lamotte.com/pages/common/newprod/index.html

[squale]

is this device more accurate than the digital trutest?  are re-agents the most accurate?

[SugarBear]

From the chemical "experts" that I have spoken to...Yes!  The reagent tests are more reliable than any strip.  But, there is a considerable price differance between the two machines.

[squale]

wonder how the regent devices compare in accuracy to this trutest digital strip reader... I would imagine this thing has some sort of light sensor in it to read the colors of the strips very very accurately and then turn that reading into a numerical value.  I would assume it's much more accurate than the human eye just looking at strips and comparing to a color chart.  I find this way of manually looking at color strips very tough, because depending on the angle that you hold the strip to the light above, the color tints tend to change and I never can be totally accurate.

[Chad]

Just buy a Taylor dpd test kit and be done with it.