Waterguru - Sense S2 Smart Pool Monitor - Chlorine & pH Meter - CYA & Alkalinity Tester Pool Water Tester - Spa & Hot Tub Monitor - Includes WaterGuru Sense S2 C5 Cassette, Float Ring & More

For the money this is a very good water testing system. I use it to monitor a remote pool and it works well for that purpose. It sits in the skimmer & tests the water daily. You can set the time of day, but no option to skip test days. I think I used two cartridges a season in NorthEast. It tests free chlorine, pH, water temperature & water flow at the skimmer. It has helped immensely, but disappointed it stopped responding after two seasons. Worth the money & relatively inexpensive compared to the few competitors. Cartridge 5-pack is $50. It is accurate & does require wifi to work. They provide water testing for detailed analysis, but my two tests did not get uploaded this season. You can manually upload detailed pool test data if you have a local tester. This house is remote so testing water locally is challenging. The app interface is easy to use & they calculate estimates for what product to add based on pool size. You can have multiple units & share the access to family members. Worth the money, no green pool for two years. Buy long lasting Lithium C batteries, the extended use is well worth the extra cost.

I bought this and then shortly after had an algae problem. So I started taking water to local pool store for testing. The chlorine & ph testing were very close and consistent. But the other 3 testing were all completely off and extremely higher. It has categories for the metals, but doesn’t test for them. It is nice to be able to look at the 2 basics on my phone and know they are accurate, but not worth the money. My strips are easy enough to use to get that info. Would not recommend.

I purchased the Water Guru specifically because it doesn’t require calibration and re-calibration like other units. It was extremely easy to install. I thought it might have been inaccurately measuring the chlorine level so I called customer service. The whole team worked as if I was their only customer.Richard, one of the engineers, was available on the weekend to solve the problem. In the end the problem wasn’t the device, it was that the chlorine level in my pool was way too high. Richard even calculated the amount of hydrogen peroxide needed to correct the problem.Outstanding device and better customer experience!

Pros: Testing seems to be pretty accurate. App is free and makes it convenient to monitor the pool conditions. The app gives suggestions and tips on improving various levels.Cons: Testing is done through cartridges. If you only test the water once per day, each cartridge will last about a month. A 5-pack of cartridges is $150... which is a little spendy. My biggest complaint is the battery life. The unit takes 4 C-cell batteries that only last about 2 weeks (based on Arizona heat in July-Aug). I would think a solar powered unit would be a better eco-friendly option.

I used the original sense for a couple of years. It was accurate but would break at a regular intervals. Was replaced under warranty a couple of times. Recently it broke again and the warranty has ran out, so I decided to upgrade to Sense 2. Unfortunately the new unit is highly inaccurate. Chlorine values are about 2.5ppm too high and PH is 0.2 lower than the actual value. Customer support is giving me a runaround instead of just replacing the unit. Frustrating that a device that is supposed to make things easy is actually a time sink.Update: replacement unit was also not accurate. Today it didn’t measure on schedule and now there is an error message “no water flow sensor report for the last 24 hours.” Which is a sign of the unit dying from my previous experience.

There's really a lot to like about Waterguru, but it does have a significant weakness. First of all, the good news. Installation is a breeze compared to some of its competitors. It's easy to unpack and drop into the skimmer (though the instructions for how to get into the battery compartment could do with some work!). I especially liked the way the device connects directly to your home wifi from the skimmer. This means you don't need to install a separate communication hub near to the pool or in the poolhouse. In addition, a skimmer-based installation means there's nothing floating around in the pool for swimmers to bump into (or to tie up somewhere). It also means the Waterguru monitors and reports the water flow rate to your pump which I've not seen with any other device. I especially liked the way it also reports the level of cyanuric acid ("stabilizer"). I like to keep stabilizer levels low in my pool so that the added chlorine has maximum effectiveness. This means monitoring the stabilizer level so it doesn't get too high is important to me. Three other positive points: (a) It uses regular batteries, so you can use standard and inexpensive rechargeable NiMH or Lithium cells (b) there's no subscription plan so you buy new test cartridges whenever you want to and use them at whatever rate is convenient for you, and finally (c) the free chlorine meter goes all the way up to 10ppm which is great for monitoring the effectiveness of your weekly or bi-weekly pool shocks. Unfortunately, what really let Waterguru down for me was the inaccuracy of its measurements. Even the simplest of tests (pH) was out by quite a large margin (down by 0.4) against pool shop water testing and my electronic meter. Alkalinity bounced around all over the place but was generally 30% too high. The worst inaccuracy, however, was Free Chlorine. Even in a well-managed pool in which Free Chlorine and Total Chlorine were kept within 0.1 ppm of each other, the Waterguru reported Free Chlorine levels that were high by 2ppm or more (e.g. 2.8 ppm was reported as 5.2 ppm, 4.8 ppm was reported as 6.9 ppm etc. This is bad news because if you take the Waterguru measurements at face value you'd hold off adding more chlorine, when in reality you need to continue with the regular dosing regimen to maintain adequate sanitation. In summary, it's a good design, it's easy to install, it offers pool flow and cyanuric acid measurements as well as the usual tests, but ultimately, I sent mine back after 14 days due to the inaccurate numbers. I'm hoping the second generation of product will be more accurate in which case I'll look forward to trying it again.