Aiper IrriSense 2 Smart Irrigation System Review: Clever Yet Uneven

$599 $470 at AmazonCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyRating:

7/10

Open rating explainerInformationWIREDTons of operational modes. App intelligence skips runs when it’s wet or windy. Much more accurate water coverage than a traditional sprinkler.TIREDLarger areas won’t get 100 percent coverage, especially on shorter runs. Water pressure can be imperfect, resulting in some minor overwatering. Big, bulky hardware is difficult to maneuver—would a handle have killed them?

If your lawn is anything like mine, it might already be looking a bit dry and brown, as warm weather and negligible rainfall have sapped all moisture from the ground. Short of paving the thing, irrigation is the only way to keep grass on the ground and plants from withering.

Photograph: Chris Null

Today’s irrigation solutions are a whole lot smarter than the oscillating sprinklers of yesteryear, and even if you don’t have an in-ground sprinkler or drip irrigation system, you can still get in on the action. Case in point is Aiper’s IrriSense 2, which is one of the most sophisticated hose-connected sprinklers I’ve tested.

A Bruiser on the Turf

To start with, photos might be misleading: The IrriSense 2 hardware is surprisingly big—a fat cylinder measuring 2 feet tall and weighing over 11 pounds. The unit must be connected to a standard garden hose and an electrical outlet. A single button on top of the device pairs the system via Bluetooth with your mobile device and initiates manual runs on demand—though you’ll need to use your phone and the Aiper app for most operations. For remote operation, 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi is also supported.

Video: Chris Null

The IrriSense 2 relies on exact positioning to work properly, and it includes two methods for ensuring such. Ground stakes are in the box for use with permanent placements. If you remove the sprinkler periodically (which would be understandable), a plastic locator device (it looks a bit like a football tee) can be spiked into the ground, ensuring you can easily put the IrriSense 2 back in the same place each time you use it.

I placed the device in the center of my backyard for testing. After a quick onboarding and numerous firmware updates, I had the IrriSense 2 ready to use.

Water Aerobics

Using the IrriSense 2 begins with determining exactly how you’re going to water your lawn. While manual watering—via remote control—is always an option, that’s not very efficient. Three automated modes include Point (for watering single spots, such as a tree or bush that periodically needs irrigating), Line (following a linear path, suitable for hedges and flowerbeds), and Area (distributing water over a two-dimensional section of land, as you would with a lawn). I mostly used the Area mode, which presents the most complex (and probably most common) use case.

ScreenshotAiper app via Chris NullScreenshotAiper app via Chris Null

To use Area mode, you first have to define the boundaries of the area. This is done in the app via a process similar to what I’ve encountered on some competing hardware devices. You fire up the mapping mode, and the sprinkler engages. Then, using a simple remote-control system, you dial the water pressure to the appropriate level, aiming at the edge of your yard but not the fence; once the water is where you want it, you drop a pin to mark the boundary of the watering area. You then rotate the nozzle on top of the sprinkler a few degrees and repeat, setting the strength of the flow to cover the desired area. Repeat again and again until you’ve gone through 360 degrees and have dropped pins to visually represent the entirety of your yard. The company says the maximum supported area is a vast 4,800 square feet, with spray reaching up to 39 feet.

ScreenshotAiper app via Chris Null

In the app, you can watch this area map being created in real time. The process is quite intuitive except for the final couple of points, where Aiper’s system makes it difficult to complete the 360-degree circuit. If you look at the completed map in the screenshot below, you’ll see a tiny sliver of yard that no amount of finagling could get Aiper to close up.

Watering runs can be initiated on demand or on a schedule, and you intriguingly define not an amount of time to run but a “water consumption limit,” measured in inches of water you want applied to the soil. While it’s nearly impossible to measure how accurate this is, qualitatively, those estimates felt about right in my testing.

In Area mode, the IrriSense 2 delivers water by spraying a jet in a single direction, rotating clockwise through its 360 degrees until it’s gone all the way around the map you’ve set before turning back and doing it again in a counter-clockwise direction, repeating this cycle until the desired irrigation depth has been reached.

While the IrriSense 2’s spray system is officially described as a gentle “mist,” it’s really more of a jet, particularly when it has to reach the far-away parts of the yard near the terminus of its range. That results in a lot more water being delivered to the edges of the yard than to the central portion of the mapped area, but that’s a common issue I’ve seen with rotary sprinklers like this. To account for this, the IrriSense 2 doesn’t just blast at full speed for the entirety of its run. Instead, repeated rotations reduce the pressure delivered bit by bit, until the final rotations are little more than a trickle of water hitting just a few inches away from the unit. (Note that canceling a run early means that only the outermost portions of the area will receive water.)

Photograph: Chris Null

Despite this trick, the results are still hit or miss. After each run, I could easily see parts of the yard that had been doused with water while others had received none at all, creating a sort of rainbow effect in the turf, with wet and dry stripes alternating. And while the IrriSense 2 includes a water pressure meter—a dial is mounted right into the top of the device—I still encountered times when the water would burst out too heavily, watering the fence or hardscape unexpectedly. More often than not, however, the jets would stick closely to the assigned path in my area map, without a lot of overwatering. As a bonus, Aiper’s app can also be configured to skip scheduled runs if high wind or rain are in the forecast—and a built-in sensor on top of the device can be used to skip runs if it detects active rainfall.

A Smart Solution

Photograph: Chris Null

While the device is sturdy and largely meets expectations, the $500 asking price for the IrriSense 2 is a heavy one, though not nearly the cost of an in-ground setup. While you’ll likely get better results from a permanent irrigation system, that’s not an option for everyone. If anything, this is a much more effective solution than a traditional hose-attached sprinkler, no matter how smart the controller is that it’s connected to.

$599 $470 at Amazon