Water timers
Do I need a hub to run a water timer from my phone?
Both of these are single-channel tap timers controlled from a phone, and neither has a rain sensor. The difference is the radio: one talks to your home Wi-Fi directly, the other needs a Zigbee hub you either own or must buy. And one of them can water by the litre rather than by the minute.
| Compared on | R2603 | SWV-BSP |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | 1 | 1 |
| Radio | 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi with no gateway | Zigbee 3.0 — a hub is required, with compatible models named |
| Programmes | Up to 20 independent schedules, plus cyclic soaking and manual | Scheduled and quantitative watering — time and volume both settable |
| Rain handling | No sensor — a 1 to 30 day rain delay set manually | None |
| Power | Standard batteries, stated to last several growing seasons; double-sealed compartment | Not published |
| Voice assistants | Alexa and Google Assistant | Not published |
| Connection thread | Not published | Not published |
A tick means one listing published something the other did not, or published a better figure. It does not mean the product is better, and the column is not a score out of anything: a maker who says less loses lines here without losing a comparison. The two verdicts below are where the page is settled.
WOOX needs nothing but a Wi-Fi network, which for most gardens is the whole argument — a hub is another box, another power socket and another thing to fail. It also publishes what a timer on a tap actually needs: twenty schedules, a manually set rain delay of up to a month, and a sealed battery compartment, because the commonest way one of these dies is water in the batteries.
SONOFF can water by volume as well as by time, and that is the more precise instruction. A bed needs a quantity of water rather than a duration, and a timer that counts litres delivers the same amount whether the mains pressure is high at dawn or low in the evening — which a minutes-based schedule does not.
Wi-Fi needs no extra hardware and reaches only as far as your router does — and a tap at the end of a garden is often exactly where the signal stops. Zigbee is low-power and forms a mesh, so it reaches further with hops, and it requires a hub. One of these publishes which compatible hubs it accepts.
No. A rain delay is you deciding not to water, from a phone, up to a month ahead. A sensor decides on its own. Neither of these has a sensor, and only one publishes a delay function — which is the honest version of the feature rather than an automatic one.
Because a tap timer lives outdoors on a tap, in the rain, all season. Water reaching the batteries corrodes the contacts and the unit stops mid-schedule, usually while nobody is there. A double-sealed compartment is the single most relevant durability claim a tap timer can make, and one of these makes it.
2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, no hub, IP65, 20 schedules, 1–30 day rain delay
Wi-Fi without a gateway, IP65 with double silicone seals, twenty schedules, a rain delay and offline alerts.
Best for: A tap within Wi-Fi range, where the watering should be checkable from somewhere else
Zigbee 3.0, hub required, volume control, 6 months of history
A Zigbee valve with quantitative watering and six months of history — and it needs a hub, which the listing says twice.
Best for: A household that already runs a Zigbee hub and wants watering in the same automation as everything else
The live figure beside a product went and asked the shop for it the moment this page opened; any amount written into the text has not moved since the sentence was drafted, and it is the first of the two that counts.
