AquaChek Connect 4+

I love the instructions about what chemicals to add and how it breaks down each reading. Very innovative! However, the image capture is really finicky if not altogether wrong.

I accidentally only bought the refills. The refill bottles do not come with a comparator! However they suggest using this app. Cool! The first thing I noticed was how awkward taking a picture of the strip is: one hand is wet while the other is holding the phone steady. You end up dripping water all over your phone! Meanwhile your strip is already drying out.

The images just aren’t working, not enough focus to get a good reading. They also stated you should use the gray background on the comparator; however as mentioned before if you only buy the refill pack you are out of luck.

I do love that you don’t need an account. If the image capture worked this would be five stars easy!

The app always interpreted its own pictures inaccurately, even when it worked. And let’s not even talk about how often certain squares on the strips don’t seem to react at all, because that’s a problem unrelated to the app. (And my strips are supposedly good until 2025…) But as a whole system this fails spectacularly in every possible way.

The newest update is unable to auto capture, at the distance required to put the top and bottom squares into the required spots. The picture is completely out of focus. So you need to move the camera further away and then pinch to zoom. Fine. I can do that. But it still doesn’t auto-capture. The app actually crashes instead of taking a picture. It can’t read manual shots either, even if they’re perfectly aligned and in focus. That leaves manual entry. And just tapping that option immediately crashes the app. Every. Single. Time. Did anybody test this update at all?

Brought a bottle of AquaChek test strips and downloaded the App hoping to save time over using drop chemical testing (knowing test strip are just a very broad “guess-a-mate”). What a waste of money and time. The App never read a single strip (11 attempts). Every attempt gave the results that the test strip could not be read and I needed to align the first test pad and black square properly. Not rocket science and the alignment was correct. Next, used 4 strips to test water and compared to color chart. I had just completed a detailed testing of the same chemicals with an industry leading liquid drop testing kit (Taylor K-2006). Some of the AquaChek test strip chemicals (pH, Total Alkalinity) were within the acceptable range, while others (Chlorine, Hardness, CyA) were completely off compared to the liquid drop results. So, lesson learned is just take the time and use the liquid drop test so the pool looks and feels great year round.