The problem is that the Storm add-on, which elevates BloomSky to genuine weather-station status, is far less reliable than the main unit. In short, we loved nearly everything about the Sky2 itself, especially the time-lapse video of the sky that pops up on the app at the end of each day. For that, as well as wind speed and direction, you need the companion Storm Wind & Rain Kit. The Sky2 is a simple and popular solution that measures temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and rainfall rate, though not accumulated rainfall amounts.
We also anonymously contacted customer support with invented issues (or, in the case of one model we tested but didn’t pick, real issues) to see how they were addressed.Īlthough it’s a bit of an oddball in the weather station market, we couldn’t resist testing the BloomSky Sky2 Weather Camera Station. Customer service: The reality is that you’re likely to eventually run into issues with any complex scientific instrument, and although all of our picks performed without problems during our testing, we scoured reviews to get a sense of how companies responded to customers with problems.And while difficulty level of setup didn’t make or break a pick, we appreciated the models that were easy to start using. As such, we weighed the ease of information access versus the depth and detail of archival information. All of the stations we considered present their historical data differently, with some focusing on a big-picture overview and others offering high-resolution, minute-to-minute snapshots. Ease of use: Most good weather stations are complex scientific instruments that collect several types of data nearly continuously.Only long-term testing will tell the true tale here, so we focused on build and materials quality during research and testing. Depending on where you live, your weather station is likely to freeze on some days and bake on others-and sometimes both on the same day. Build quality: The biggest issue plaguing most of the affordable weather stations we researched, according to user reviews, is the ability to withstand the elements.As such, we paid careful attention to how well data from the weather stations we tested (especially all-in-one units) compared with measurements from a physical rain gauge and outdoor thermometer, especially on the rainiest days and on bright afternoons in which direct energy from the sun and heat reflection might skew the temperatures of the outdoor sensors themselves higher than the ambient air temperature. Accuracy and sensitivity: As discussed above, acquiring the most-accurate measurements of meteorological data isn’t easy, especially if you’re collecting all of your data from one location.So we focused on wireless systems and did our best to stress-test the wireless connectivity of all the stations we brought in for evaluation. Connectivity: While Reddit posts and user reviews made it pretty clear to us that wireless weather stations can be unreliable, none of the people we interviewed wanted to deal with the hassle of wires.
The Davis combination is a couple hundred dollars more than our top pick and its sensors, but in terms of precision and build quality, we don’t think you’ll find a more reliable solution unless you’re willing to spend hundreds more. You’ll need to add the WeatherLinkIP if you want to log your weather data online or connect with Weather Underground’s Personal Weather Station Network, a manufacturer-agnostic online portal that allows you to upload data from your own station and use the data from others’ stations. And on heavy rain days, it was the only station that perfectly matched our physical rainfall measurements.
The Vantage Vue system has superior build quality and extra sensitivity that lets it capture slighter, briefer wind gusts, which in our testing other stations missed.
WEATHER WALL MAC REVIEWS FULL
If your interest in the weather goes past enthusiasm and into full nerd territory, if you rely on accurate weather data for your livelihood, or if long-term durability is your primary concern, Davis Instruments’s Vantage Vue, together with the WeatherLinkIP data logger and software system, is worth the extra expense.
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