Vantage Vue Weather Station

The Vantage Vue was sent to us courtesy of  www.davisnet.com in USA and  through their Australian distributor Ecowatch at www.davisinstruments.com.au in Australia.  With the product being their latest 2010 model hot off the assembly line it required some last minute radio frequency alterations to conform with Australian legal requirements.

Let me first apologise to those people who were expecting a “shoot out”.  Unfortunately, the other party would not supply their product under the same concept and understanding that Davis did.  Davis just said “we are sending you our latest 2010 product, compare it with whatever you like”.  Nice to be so sure of yourself I guess, but I did wonder if they were perhaps too bold.

Have Davis set a new benchmark for their competitors to aspire to?  Let’s see!

 

 

 

 

Vantage Vue Weather Station - What comes in the box

When it arrived I could see right from opening the very professionally boxed package, to looking at the flash console, you had to be impressed.  In fact, the photo that is on their site doesn’t do the product justice as it looks far better “in the flesh”.

 

I’m not going to just reproduce the specifications of what this product does as I would fill up 2-3 pages, but suffice for me to say it simply does everything you could possibly want, plus more.  My intention is to inform you of what I thought were good points and highlight any negative ones.

All instructional books are extremely well documented and at no point during assembly did I flounder.  There was basically only a few steps: take out of the box, attach the wind vane, attach the wind direction arrow, put in two rain gauge parts, put in batteries, plug in console and let it do it’s own thing.  It was talking to itself within a few minutes and became operational before I managed to mount it on a rod on my house roof.

I took 1 hour all up to assemble because I read everything, configured the console with time date and used Google earth data for my location and altitude.  I believe if I did another one I would have it all working within 15-20 minutes.  Absolutely staggering, when you consider this product can give you in excess of 14 accurate weather function readings (more if you plug in options), after approximately only 20 minutes of assembly time.

The sampling unit and transmitter, all in one, is compact and all encompassing.  In fact, put this unit on a stick and you are all done – no cables and no more parts left.  It’s not until you read the OTHER things this product can do that you really become amazed.  I urge you to read the functions’ capability on the websites that we have put at the beginning of the review as a link.

One thing I will mention is that this product can be expanded by “options” which means it will even collect data from a site 6 kilometers away.  Ideal for farmers or anyone who needs to know what is happening away from their residence.

With other reviews I have done, I have always found something I believe is not quite as good as it could be.   This is one of those rare occasions when I can find nothing wrong.  Even the service i.e. contacting someone via telephone, has been easy at both Davis USA and Ecowatch Australia.  They simply haven’t put a foot wrong.

Did Davis set a new overall benchmark for their competitors to aspire to?  They sure have!

For around $680 Aud if you think this is a glowing report IT IS.  They simply deserve it.

We are giving it our coveted Editor’s Choice Award!

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