Wait, didn’t Wyze just unveil a robot vacuum last week? It sure did, but the smart home upstart has another smart gadget up its sleeves: a sprinkler controller, which you can preorder starting today.
The Wyze Sprinkler controller will cost just $50 when it ships this January, making it yet another Wyze product with an aggressively low price tag.
By way of comparison, most of the sprinkler controllers we’ve tested cost well north of $100, while one of the few sub-$100 sprinkler controllers we have reviewed, the $44 Orbit’s B-hyve Smart Hose Watering Time, is intended only for garden hoses or drip irrigation, not in-ground sprinklers. We haven’t tried the Wyze Sprinkler controller yet, but we’re curious to see how such an inexpensive model holds up during real-world use.
Capable of controlling up to eight sprinkler zones, the Wyze Sprinkler controller lets you take charge of your sprinklers remotely using the Wyze app, and you can set daily, weekly, or sunrise/sunset watering schedules. The controller also supports third-party rain and soil sensors, which can trigger or skip watering cycles depending on the moisture level of your soil.
Wyze
The Wyze Sprinkler controller supports up to eight sprinkler zones.
The Wyze Sprinkler also supports a series of advanced features that require Sprinkler Plus, a $10-a-year add-on plan (you’ll get three free years of Sprinkler Plus if you pre-order). For example, “smart schedules” can water your lawn automatically based on “hyper-local” weather data (Wyze says the controller can draw weather reports from more than 60,000 stations in the U.S.), and the controller can skip watering cycles during windy, hot, or rainy weather. Another Sprinkler Plus feature can give you “insights” on the soil moisture level in each sprinkler zone based on historical data.
The actual Wyze Sprinker controller boasts a black oval design with LED indicators for each watering zone, along with buttons that let you cycle through the various zones as well as turn the water on or off. The controller isn’t designed for outdoor installation, but a Wyze rep said that a waterproof box for the device should be available next year.
As with most other sprinkler controllers we’ve tried, the Wyze Sprinkler controller doesn’t support Alexa or Google Assistant—or at least, not yet, with Wyze telling us that voice assistant support is coming “in the future.”
Stay tuned for a full review of the Wyze Sprinkler controller once we spend some quality time with a review unit.
Updated shortly after publication to note that you’ll get three years of Sprinkler Plus if you pre-order. According to briefing materials for the Wyze Sprinkler controller, only one free year of Sprinkler Plus was included with a pre-order.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he covers smart speakers, soundbars, and other smart and home-theater devices. You can follow Ben on Twitter.