Most effective test kit?

[Larryo]

What's the most effective test kit and what is essential to measure.
pH, alkalinity, hardness, bromine..... all necessary? Other things?

Best kit? Heard of the Taylor test kit, but seems to only test three of the above. Comments?

[chem geek]

The Taylor K-2006 for chlorine tests Free Chlorine (FC), Combined Chlorine (CC), pH (with acid/base demand tests), Total Alkalinity (TA), Calcium Hardness (CH), and Cyanuric Acid (CYA).  The Taylor K-2106 for bromine tests Total Bromine (TB), pH (with acid/base demand tests), Total Alkalinity (TA) and Calcium Hardness (CH).

Unless you have a plaster spa or one with tile that has grout, then you don't need to test for CH unless it's high from the fill water (so you'll know if you risk getting scaling) or unless you intend to add CH to 150 ppm to prevent foaming.

[Kev B]

 The Taylor test kit is great and I pull mine out sometimes, and always on commercial pool and spas. But I find most homeowners are best off with the test strips. Test strips are plenty accurate and quick and easy and usually insures my customers will be more faithful to testing than having to pull out the big kit. Leisure Time strips are the ones I like the best. They are also great to take on vacation in case you are around any questionable pools or hot tubs

[Waterlogger]

The Pentair Rainbow PRO-11 will do all of that as well.