AcuRite Wireless Digital Indoor Thermometer and Hygrometer Monitor for Indoor Temperature and Humidity Measurements (00613)

UPDATE June 10, 2015: This is still running along like a champ. It keeps on telling me how truly warm our bedroom is, even with the A/C running! (Right now, it is 82 degrees at 2 in the morning, with the A/C, a ceiling fan and a box fan running. Eww!) In fact, after a few days of looking at the really high humidity in here as well (the roof of the little house turns black when it gets higher than it should be), I am back on Amazon, shopping for a dehumidifier. (We rent, so we cannot just get a new A/C unit etc.) By the way, we have not had to change the battery since we bought in three years ago, so it doesn't suck through the batterie either. Great little unit! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have to say that I really wanted the blue one, but the tightwad part of me said to save a few bucks and get the black one, in case it doesn't really work. There are a lot of mixed reviews on this item, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I wish I had had it during our recent extreme heat wave (over 100 for two weeks in a row, with killer heat indexes).Of course, it might have been even more depressing to see what the inside temperatures REALLY were like! We have a temperature gun that has the point-n-shoot laser that gives instant feedback on the temp of any given surface. It works great, but it's my husband's maintenance toy, and I couldn't keep it all the time. So, I looked for my own toy. This one certainly fills the bill. I kept his gun up here for about a week to double check the temps on what it said vs what the monitor said. It was very accurate. Now, I didn't have a way to measure the humidity with his temp gun, but I can tell that by how swollen my ankles are! ; ) So far, it works like a champ. If I was to change anything at all, it would be to have some sort of hole to thread something through to hang it up. Right now, I don't want the magnet around my computer equipment, so have to watch where I put it. I have nothing metallic to attach it to, so it is sitting up on my desk, away from my CPU. The display is large and easy to read. It started working immediately upon putting in the batteries. (It takes only one (1) alkaline AA battery. Of course, no clue how long it will last yet, but only one is great!) Bottom line: I'm glad that I got it. I like to know the basic temp/humidity level in the bedroom where I have it. Our older-than-dirt apartment has almost no insulation, so whatever it is outside, we are usually just a little bit cooler inside, thanks to a black roof and brick sides that retain the sun's heat. Great job, Acu-Rite - it works like a champ! UPDATE 07-23-12: I do have one bone to pick over this item. Having used it a little longer now, I now see that the highs/lows to the right of the temperature or humidity level are only for the LAST 24 HOURS!! Instead of showing the highest temp in the room or lowest, it is only the high/low for a one-day period! That kind of stinks. I realized what it was doing when we hit a high of 92 in the bedroom (with the A/C running, ceiling fan and box fan - I hate this heat wave!), and that temp disappeared when it cooled off over the weekend a little bit (to a temp of "only" 81). Now both the high and low are 81. That part isn't pleasant, but I wanted to mention it, in case anyone was trying to track how hot/cold it gets in a particular area. You'll only see a max of 24-hrs of info, and your old data will disappear. You'll have to track temp changes manually. The temps do seem accurate, but the lack of actual high/low storage is a bit disappointing.

UPDATE - 8/23/2015 OK. I've had this for a few days now. As before, the hygrometer seems to be working well enough for what I intend to use it for. Which is just making sure I'm not saturating my room with the humidifier. It continues to agree with the other analog hygrometer I have within a couple of percentage points. Practically exact unless you need absolute accuracy. The thermometer, I'm still not sure about but it rarely reads below 77, even though it often feels colder. My thermostat (which is located in the hallway) generally disagrees with this unit with about 5 degrees. So I'm gonna recommend if you need an absolute accurate thermometer, you should probably look elsewhere. I doubt it's that hard to find for about the same price. I just wouldn't trust this for temperature readings in a critical setting. ----------------------- PREFACE - OK. Let's get this out of the way first. I just received this meter earlier today and have been watching it and comparing it to a cheaper analog hygrometer (Made by Best Air) I already had just to see what kinds of differences I would see. Let me say first off I am judging this product MAINLY based upon it's price. This thing sells for less than 10 bucks (US). It's obviously NOT intended to be a fine scientific instrument (even if the name might lead you to believe so). I also bought this mainly for the hygrometer function. The Thermometer function is nice to have (assuming it's accurate) but since I intend to use this in a bedroom where the temperature pretty much stays in the 70s all year, I don't have much use for that. MY EXPERIENCE - The first thing I noticed when I put the battery in was that it's nice that it runs on AAs. Kudos to them for making it run on AA batteries instead of some kind of button battery or something. Seems like such a small thing but honestly. AA batteries are so ubiquitous that it just doesn't make sense to use some kind of less common button battery unless size and weight is really an issue. With a device like this, who cares? The size and weight of a AA battery is not really going to matter on a meter that sits on your desk all the time. Anyway, I guess I just felt I needed to mention that since I just had to replace TWO of those button batteries in other devices I own in the last couple of days. It doesn't seem like such a big deal until you realize that people (generally) don't keep as many of them around. OK. The next thing I noticed. I put the battery in and sat the meter on my desk right beside the analog Best Air hygrometer and left them there for about an hour. The humidity readings were very close. By that, I mean within a couple of percentages. (I know this is not a reliable scientific test but bear with me). Next thing I tried was I opened my window and sat both of them right by the window. about a half hour later, the readings between the two were drastically different. The analog meter was reading somewhere in the 70% range (which was what the weather channel says the humidity was for this are) and the AcuRite was reading somewhere in the 50% range. So I took them both back to my desk and sat them both there for a while and they soon were (again) very close. And they have been reading (generally) the same since. The only explanation I have for this is the AcuRite was apparently only designed to measure indoor humidity. I'm not a weather scientist and I don't know why that might be (Which is why I bought a cheap meter instead of an insanely expensive one) but that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Temperature readings seem to be reasonably accurate no matter what (I'm not going to complain if a ten dollar meter is off within a few degrees). Humidity only seems to work well indoors (and presumably, well away from any open windows you might have). Since it says right on the screen "Indoor Humidity" I think it's reasonable to conclude this probably wasn't designed to measure outdoor humidity levels. That said, I understand there is a salt test you can do with hygrometers by putting them in a sealed plastic bag with some salt and water for a period of time. I believe I will try that within the next week or so and see what the results are. I would like to be reasonably confident in the humidity readings from this meter at least within a small room. If that works as it's supposed to, I will say this is a great deal for the purposes I intend to use it for (Simply making sure I'm not overdoing it with my room humidifier). I have to say though that for the price (About $5 locally) I'm very surprised the analog Best Air unit seems to be pretty accurate under pretty much all conditions. I didn't expect that. Which is the reason I bought a second hygrometer to start with. At any rate, this has been a good purchase. 1. It wasn't expensive at all. 2. It's probably a pretty good digital thermometer even if the hygrometer is not entirely reliable. 3. It looks nice. 4. It's not complicated. It has one button to switch between %F and %C. Although it's nice to be able to calibrate a hygrometer, that's an advanced procedure and is probably more trouble than most people would go to on a ten dollar meter. I am impressed that you can get something this decent for so little money. 5. If nothing else, I am now reasonably sure the hygrometer I already had is pretty accurate. So if you put the price of the two together, I paid less than $20 for a reasonably accurate way to know my room humidity level. You could easily pay more than that for one meter and still have to calibrate it. And many of the more inexpensive hygrometers are apparently intended for cigar humidors. I don't know how much that matters but since this whole humidity thing seems to be hard to get right, I would not be surprised if there's a pretty big difference.

I use these in three separate tanks for my land hermit crabs. I have purple pincers and they need to be around 75 to 85 for both humidity and temperature. I do have a thermostat for my heat mat but this is good to know that the temperature is within the right range, and that the humidity is in an acceptable zone for their little gills to be breathing properly. This was especially helpful during the immediate post purchase adjustment phase. The crabs come from an environment that's less than ideal between the beaches where they're taken to the pet store where we purchase them to our tank at home and so we have to adjust their climate slowly just like somebody moving from the lowlands would need a couple months to adjust to a very high altitude. it takes a while for their bodies to adapt to new environment and making sure that we have constant and accurate temperature and humidity readings helps us while they physiologically adjust to their new home. They update pretty frequently, I think when going in or out of the tank they'll give a new reading about every 10 seconds until they are reading the new environment accurately so it could take a few minutes to go from an 80% humidity environment to a 50% humidity environment for that reading to adjust all the way down and stabilize. I had bought a six pack of some cheaper little hygrometer/thermometer gauges, and it was clear those were not accurate and took a long time and still didn't really adjust to what I thought was a reasonably accurate reading. You know for basically maybe one or two dollars more I'm definitely getting a device that I trust a lot more with this thermometer gauge than other ones that I've used. When you compare these to the ones marketed toward terrarium and reptile humidity and heat gauges, these digital ones are just such better quality and so much more reliable for literally maybe $2 more . The health of your pet isn't really something that you want to skimp on $2 for to make sure that they're getting what they need to breathe and be healthy properly.

I moved to northern California from Arizona, so I wanted to gauge how much indoor humidity was present, seeing as I have several guitars. I got this gauge because it looked fairly robust in the pictures. Well, I am using it and so far, the results are good as far as the humidity. It has registered between 37 and 51% since I began using it - which is well within tolerance for guitars. I like the large readout, which is very easy to see across the room. It also shows the range of both temperature and humidity in the last 24 hours. One point I would like to make is that the description didn't say that it takes a AA battery which is not included. It does say AAA, but that is incorrect - so if you order it make sure you have a fresh AA battery handy. It is a good product and worth buying at the price they are asking - around $10.

I bought this little unit ten YEARS ago, and it still works amazingly well and is used every single day. Battery lasts forever. The temperature is still quite accurate based on comparison to two other temperature measuring devices in the house and while I can’t guarantee exact accuracy of the humidity, based on feel alone it seems quite accurate. GREAT PURCHASE! The price really hasn’t gone up hardly at all in that time based on what it is selling for today, which is a plus. If I ever need another one, I will definitely buy it again.

Very accurate thermometer when placed against our other one to test it out. Very functional and small. We like this product very much and the batteries last a long time.

Great product and I use it in a plastic container. Quite accurate

Works great. Important to know humidity levels.