Portable Weather Station

Reviews

I just received my Honeywell Weather time barometric weather forecaster. A big 'Thank You' to all the previous buyers who had advice on set-up. That helped until I discovered the unit will not register altitude above 3999'. That means I will never have an accurate reading on this unit. I live at 5240' above sea level. Honeywell TE653ELW Portable Barometric Weather Forecaster

I bought two of these since I wanted a base station in my basement office and one on the main floor. That meant I had 2 bases and 2 remote sensors sitting beside each other while I was setting them up. One of the base stations shows a 3 degree F temperature difference from the other 3 units. I checked this the next day in another location and the problem was still there. This is clearly a defect but not so much that I would take it back. This thing is still great and other than this problem I would have given 5 stars. This should have been spotted if any quality check had been done. The humidity reading across the 4 units is consistent. The readings are kind of low but I am blaming Winter and my furnace for that. Both base stations read both remote units but not each other. It would have been good if they had the ability to switch on remote broadcast from the base units as well. The documentation is garbage but I had no trouble setting the time zone once I saw the other customer's comment that the day had to be displayed on the time line before hitting the up button. It took quite a few tries to get the altitude set since I didn't get the insert that some people mentioned. I can't say how I did it. I did reinsert the batteries and then I just kept pushing the buttons on the back until eventually the altitude switched to 10m and started to flash, at that point the up arrow on the back was able to adjust it to my desired setting. From a usability aspect it is great to see the 24 hour barometric trend on the screen but why did Honeywell set it up so that it flashes the updates every second. They should have just displayed the info without the constant reloading. If the goal there was to show a sudden change then this would be wrong place to do it anyway since you really would barely notice.

I really like the product. The only problem I've had was trying to change the time zone. It thinks I'm in the West but I live in GA, and I haven't been able to get it to reset to East.

This Honeywell weather station is a wonderful instrument; it's my second purchase of this item, the first being so fun to use I bought this one as a gift and it was happily received, too.

Once I got the time zone set, and also the altitude, this digital barometer worked great. The backlight maybe should stay on a little longer though. Thanks so much to the other people here who wrote reviews about setting the time zone and the altitude. Without their help I don't know if I would have EVER gotten these two things set correctly! The documentation that came with this item is absolutely horrible. How could they have left out instructions on setting such important data as the time zone and altitude? Mine did not come with any insert telling how to do this. So thanks again to those who took the time to post how to set these -- you were a great big help to me! Weather instruments have always been a hobby of mine. This is a nice little digital barometer. I only hope that the manufacturer will start including better instructions with their units. It would certainly save a lot of people a lot of irritation.

Reviews

This clock is difficult to setup and operate. In an age where we have iPods, iPhones and Wiis, I can't believe Honeywell would manufacture and sell something that is so non-intuitive, clunky and stupid. The other folks who criticized this item are correct - it tells the time and everything else is hard to use, non-adjustable and clunky. Honeywell - why don't you hire some interface designers to make something suitable for this decade instead of the 1970s?

The main issue we have with this is getting a valid outdoor temperature. This is a replacement for The Weather Channel clock/weather forecaster. I love the projected display but can't seem to get the outdoor sensor in a good spot to give an accurate temperature. It seems to be much more limited in the distance it can be away from the base than our prior device, thus it must be too close to the house and gets too much house heat.

As a clock projector, this works well. Plenty of focus and adjustment options. I can see the time and temp clearly on my ceiling. That's about where the good things end. The goofy cloud/sun indicator is a projection, but you have no adjustment over it. Why not?? The alarm is a joke. It was obviously intended for light sleepers. It has no volume adjustment, and is just a soft beeping. If you make the mistake of brushing over the TOUCH SENSITIVE ALARM SWITCH (WTF???) you won't be hearing back from your alarm after you hit snooze. Hope you weren't planning to get up on time. The light sensor doesn't work. When set on Auto, you would think the LCD backlight would turn on when dark. Nope, you have to press a button for things to light up. Real smart. The projector has no sensor option at all, so it either always on (a waste of energy and bulb life during the day) or off totally (again, requiring you to press the snooze button if you want to see the time on your ceiling...why??) The weather transmitter unit thing worked one night and I never heard from it again. I brought it back inside thinking it was just too cold for it, but alas, still nothing. I'm going to read through the (not so great) instructions once more to get the thing to re-acquire (if I remember correctly, having to remove the tiny screws to access the buttons inside on the transmitter), but I suspect reliability is going to continue to be lame. Overall, I am getting my old alarm clock back out. My whole reason for buying this one was to have the projector feature. I didn't want to have to have seperate devices, but here I am. I should have known better than to assume an all-in-one device might actually work like it should. **UPDATE** - the projection portion of this unit has now started to fail, resulting in impossible times of 10:76, etc. This is now a glorious paperweight. Luckily, I kept the box and I am underneath a year warranty, so we'll see what Honeyfail does for me.

Seems like a great product but could never get the projection feature to work properly. Finally gave up and use it as a clock in our TV room.

I bought the identical looking Model PCR11ELW without the weather feature. I got it to work and was satisfied. After 8 or 9 months several sections of the LCD gave up resulting in a garbled useless display. Bad quality - and I did not register the device and did not kep the box with the UPC - out of luck with 1 year warranty. I trusted the Honeywell name - probably a mistake. I have had one other projection clock for 5 years - another brand and cheaper, that still works fine (I bought it in Europe).

Reviews

This weather forecaster works perfectly. It synched right up the first time, and is accurate and easy to read. The backlight is great. Pay attention to the dimensions -- it's a little big for a nightstand.

This remote thermometer and receiver indeed work over a longer distance ("range") than some similar products. It also has an alarm function which alerts, if any remote temperature gets beyond your specified high or low. All such remotes have distance limits. Many others say 100 feet, this one says 300ft. All get attenuated significantly, when passing through various thicknesses of walls, etc. For me, this one works where other brands did not, e.g. from inside a underground irrigation control box. Note that the same one alarm range for remote temperature applies to each remote thermometer. And the base reporting unit can monitor up to three remote thermometer sensors. If you want more than one remote, to get it, it may be worth buying more than one set of base+remote. I did not find just an extra remote alone at a lower price. This has the fringe benefit that then all sensors broadcast to all base stations. All my units were calibrated equally, so having only one alarm range works fine. It also has a weather "forecast" feature over the next 12 hours, but this is not driven by barometric readings, nor by weather radio, but is only an estimate based on temperature and humidity. Supposedly correct 78% of the time, and in any case fun to watch the icons for sun and rain.

I am not at all impressed with this honeywell product. It is not at all intuitive as to how to change settings, and if you hit the wrong button when an alarm goes off, it puts you into reset mode and you have to reset everything. Temp changed reading from F to C and will not go back to read in Farenheit, and it often has false readings on the outside sensor, showing sun or partial sun with 98% humidity and rain going off. Overall, I rate this honeywell product as a lemon and would send it back if I had not thrown away the mandatory packaging and original info that came with it. Maybe honeywell needs to go back to made in USA for quality, instead of following suit with everyone who is getting their products made in China.I would gladly pay more for something if it was user friendly and it worked! This thing is junk and I will be looking for a replacement.

This unit is great. It is compact and takes up little space, but provides all the information needed for weather. It has a good display, for those of us who need to see "big" characters on the screen. It actually is very acurate according to comparisons with the weather bureau. We think it is an extremely good buy for the quality.

Every function performs as advertised - and with accuracy. I did not encounter any of the problems mentioned in some of the other reviews. It is an attractive little unit. It has sat on a book case for months and has yet to fall over because I added a tiny bit of adhesive Velcro to the bottom of the stand. Most of the time I forget it is there. This unit is only slightly larger than a TV remote, therefore, it is best suited for a location where it can be viewed at short range. Keep in mind, there are restrictions as to where this unit can be located in order to receive the best signals. The option for the extra remotes is a nice touch. Even as such, I prefer the La Crosse Technology WS-8256U for only $18.34 from Amazon.Com. (See my review) You can view the data while walking through a room without stopping, but this is merely personal preference.

Reviews

I tested this device for over an hour with several different thermometers. It is inaccurate in both temperature and humidity. I now have to pay shipping because I got a product that doesn't work? EFF that.