Customer Reviews

Black & Decker PCS10 PlantSmart Digital Plant Care Sensor

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

Can you imagine buying something, like this, to help you measure SOMETHING. I was very disappointed that ALL it did was give you "moisture," "bright," "warm." NO REAL NUMBERS! Than it gives you a list of plants for your "area" and a link, for some, to buy the plant/seeds - selling! So it does an awful job collecting data with no numbers ("warm," "intense [sunlight]]," "moist"[soil]). What is "bright"? What is "moist"? I could do this MYSELF just by looking and touching the ground! No Ph LEVEL!! They want MORE MONEY for "fertilizer" information. LOUSY and VERY disappointed. Don't waste you money. Just look out the window, touch the ground, and save your money especially when this device comes back with recommendation to "BUY" plants, seeds, and additional soil information on a monthly basis that should be included when you purchase it.

Without a subscription the product gives only limited information about soil moisture levels and Sun light. No information on soil quality or fertilizer receommendations unless you subscribe to a monthly plan which is about $4 more a month. Useless.

If you want to get readings of how much sunlight & moisture areas of your garden receive or if you want to know your soil temp, it gives you a nice little graph. If you want recommendations for types of plants or seeds, there are some limitations. In my case, the 1st recommendation for 5 of the 6 areas I monitored is something called saxifraga. I've never seen or heard of this plant in all the years I've been gardening. It's not even listed in any of my gardening books except for a small comment about plant propagation in a houseplant book. I was taking outdoor readings. The major disappointment is in customer support. I've called Black & Decker several times trying to get some clarification about the plant recommendations, or lack thereof. The most common response is "They gave us one to use, but I haven't tried mine yet." - or words to that effect. The most frustrating thing is that according to this device, basil won't grow in an area of my garden where it's grown for the past 2 years, but it doesn't say why. I called cust supp. once more to see if someone could clarify how it makes recommendations. I got the company line about not having used the device. When I asked to speak with someone who had used it, I was told that she wasn't in today but would be back tomorrow. Apparently there's only 1 person at B & D who knows anything about it.

I bought it during a Gold Box Deal for under $30. It might be worth that amount, barely. It's definitely not worth $50.00. It would be a better deal if the fertilization data was included, but if you want to know about the nutrient levels in your soil, it costs an extra $3.00/mo.

To get full use of this product you must purchase additional access to online analysis. I would not recommend this product. See other reviews for details of problems with it's application.

I received this as a gift from my husband this afternoon, and I'm already wowed by this little gadget. (As a side note to the reviewer above, the box that mine came in was not brown cardboard, it was a glossy full-color box with instructions and photos all over it. However, mine came from a certain Home store with a bright orange logo, rather than Amazon....) I pulled it out of the box, put in the battery, glanced through the instructions, and got started online. Now, an hour later, it's already in the ground outside (yes, in the middle of a snowy 20-degree December day....I'm a little over-excited to start using it!), and I'm adding my dozens of plant varieties to the "My Plants" section of the very-helpful website.

The whole process is very simple, my Windows 7 laptop connected to the device, recognized it, and installed it within a few minutes. The website offers some fairly good basic recommendations for each plant in your garden, but for uber-detailed fertilizer recommendations, there is an optional $25 annual subscription. I'll probably subscribe, since I'm still a new gardener, but I was very pleased at the level of advice that is included on the website for free.

The reason this product got four stars instead of five is that the "plant library" is not yet comprehensive. However, they claim that they will add plants as you recommend them, so that is a good compromise. All in all, it's a great way to get customized recommendations for each flower and each planting area in your yard, and I'd highly recommend it for the geeky gardener in your life.

Below was my original review:

I have a patch in my front yard that's currently bare and I was interested in planting something there. Of course, the question is what? I'm not a very experienced gardener which is why I got this. Sadly, the thing never worked from the moment I opened the box.

I activated it, downloaded the software, did everything the directions said to do and at first, it seemed like everything was going smoothly. When I plugged the device into my computer, the program opened and showed me it was currently on watering mode. I wanted to change it to recommend mode but when I did that, my computer said the PlantSmart was not plugged in. I tried various things: rebooting my computer, replugging the device in, changing settings and preferences for the program and nothing helped.

I finally contacted their customer service. They insisted my anti-virus software was the problem. I explained I did not have anti-virus software on my computer so they said it was my firewall. I told them I checked and PlantSmart was on the list of exceptions. Then, I didn't hear from them again. I guess I'm left to figure it out for myself. I suppose it's not a total wash since I can still use it for water monitoring mode but the sole reason I got the thing was for the recommendations and I was disappointed I never got to use that feature.

**Customer service did indeed contact me and tweaked their software to fix the problem. I was able to use the device and got some good recommendations. I really liked that they had photos of the recommended plants since I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what a plant looks like based solely on the name. Glad that everything worked out in the end.

This product is a dismal failure. I am appalled I have to give it even one star. Part of why I am so upset is that I gave it so much time and effort because I was determined to figure it out. I give up. It simply does not work. I don't know if it's because my product arrived broken or if it's simply a design flaw. Here's what I got: one reading. For that I burned through seven batteries and countless reading attempts. I got messages of not enough sun (in sunny locations) or not long enough time (even though it was more than 24 hours). I suspect the battery wore out in less than 24 hours. Big design flaw. Customer service is a disaster. None at all would have been better. On probably 40 occasions I emailed questions and got a reply that the question had to be submitted within the lines of the reply mail. I did as instructed. The only response I got was that I didn't put the question within the lines. Yes, that's it. If you value your sanity do not buy this product. I may never buy another Black & Decker product again. It's a great idea. But this product is not the answer. They need to go back to the drawing board and maybe find some other chumps to test it out. It won't be me.

 

I've been gardening for many years in different countries. Not a Master Gardener, but I really love producing food and fruit in my Mediterranean, dry climate, with clay soil. So, PlantSmart has helped me get a handle mostly on moisture levels around the garden. And the fertilizer readings have been very helpful when going from a deciduous fruit tree to a California Native Oak tree. Without having ever fertilized my Oak Tree- my Oak (planted one year ago) says my fertilizer is JUST RIGHT. My fruit trees on the other hand, need an organic based fertilizer every 3 months or so. My trees are surviving and they are producing more fruit. Great Value for the price - most professional sensors are at least double and not as user friendly.

This is one of the best garden/plant products I have ever bought. With the weather changes I have used this product to determine the watering, fertilizing, and light for some of my most desired plants. I would definately buy another one if needed.

For the price, the PlantSmart sensor is a bargain; it works well as an environmental sensing, monitoring and recommendation system. The system monitors light, temperature, soil moisture and (potentially - see below for a disclaimer) nutrient levels, collected over weeks of time and viewed on the website, something that I've never seen in this price range before.

The product is darn good, but not perfect. Black and Decker adopted a conservative "consumer friendly" approach, so that very little decision making is placed in the hands of the consumer; in the interest of simplifying this product, B&D gave the PlantSmart a closed architecture, so even if you were interested in seeing the underlying data, you wouldn't be able to. In terms of obtaining a recommendation, you plug the sensor into your computer using a USB cable, pick your plant, set the PlantSmart to Monitor mode, and then stick the sensor into the pot you want to monitor. Water your plant when at the start, then wait; data is collected for 2 days to 2 weeks (they recommend that you wait for a full watering cycle). After the unit beeps at you (indicating dry soil), you reconnect the sensor to the computer, and upload the data. The data is processed through the B&D website, and the values are compared against an aggregated database from several major sources (National Gardening Association, W. Atlee Burpee, Ball Horticulture). The website then provides recommendations to you for plant care. For consumers, this is generally an excellent approach, as it greatly simplifies getting the good results for most plants the long term. Nevertheless, if you are one of those people who bought this product and you really want to see the underlying data (questions such as "how much did the soil moisture content decline over 24 hours"), this is not the best device for you. I hope that B&D decides to make the underlying data sets accessible to consumers in the future.

Although this is a very good product for general plant care, there were a few things that I didn't like. First, I am not a big fan of the orange color choice; the EasyBloom petal color (green) was much nicer. Second, you have to be patient with this product, and it is not suitable for someone who wants instant results; it takes between 2-14 days per plant to collect a high quality data set, so if you have more than 2-3 plants, you might should consider purchasing two or three sensors to speed up your monitoring. My biggest complaint with this product is that a key feature that is promoted with PlantSmart is actually not currently available, so B&D's advertising is a bit misleading, if not outright false advertising. The Fertilizer Monitoring service that is promoted with this product is simply not working for new PlantSmart sensor. When Black and Decker purchased this the PlantSmart sensor technology from the Easybloom folks a few months ago, they added a subscription service ($25 a year) for fertilizer, something that was formerly available through Easybloom for free. While I am not exactly pleased about paying for this,it is inexpensive enough not to be a major consideration. However, even if I wanted to turn on this service, I cannot; the service is non-functional through the website at the present time. So if you buy a new PlantSmart sensor today, there is no way to monitor fertilizer levels. Cruddy! This reflects poorly on Black and Decker's management of the PlantSmart product line. From what I can tell, the Black and Decker acquisition only make the product worse after they bought it from EasyBloom; not only did their management turn a feature that was formerly free into a pay service, they made this service inaccessible.