Review: Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station

Tn924W Vert

We just finished over a month of testing on the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station. The last month has also been a really great month to test the various features of the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station. We've had thunderstorms, winds, rain, hot days, wet days, and other crazy weird weather. How did the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station hold up? Is it worth the nearly $300 you'll spend to have your own wireless home weather station you can hook up to your PC and other neat features?

Let's start off with the specs and setup. The Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station kit includes an adaptor, the weather station, a temperature/hygromter, a remote Anemometer, and a rain gauge. The three sensors are wireless and send data to the main station. Each can take regular batteries, but if you live in a cold climate they recommend getting hardier batteries besides your standard Duracell.

Setup was rather straight forward, our only complaint was having to rigidly go step by step to set up each data areas of location, time, temperature, and other info the main unit needs. If you go out of order by starting with location and time, then you really don't get the weather station set up completely. So stick with the directions in the manual and you'll be set up in less than 10 minutes.

The packaging is well done and shows you most of the features
of the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station right away.

What you need to do like most weather stations is put the batteries in the remote sensors first, then load the batteries and turn on the weather station. You can run batteries and also use the adaptor on the main station. We think this might also be a good feature for the Anemometer as well. We didn't mount ours to the roof, but thinking about going up and un-mounting it to replace batteries didn't appeal to us either. So having a way to mount the various options with direct power might be a nice option.

Detailed

Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station Specs:

Time

• Automatically sets to the US Atomic clock
• Dual crescendo alarm with programmable snooze
• User-friendly sunrise & sunset calculator
• Moon Phase Calendar

The main base station unit. Very easy to read from
across a room and also has a backlight.

Weather

• NOAA SAME Technology
• Public Alert Certified Device
• 12 to 24 hour weather forecast
• 24 hour barometric pressure history chart
• 7-channel capability-accepts up to 4 additional sensors (sold separately)
• Programmable ice warning alarm
• Indoor/Outdoor Temperature & Humidity

Included sensors:

• Anemometer measures wind speed and direction
• Rain gauge measures rainfall amount
• Thermo-hygrometer measures temperature and humidity
• 200 weather records without PC connection
• PC software (included) and USB port
• Operating range from 100 feet (30 meters) up to 328 feet (100 meters)

The temperature/hygrometer. What we really like is the
digital readout on the sensor itself. Make sure you put this
in a shady non-sunny spot to get the best results.

The Rain Gauge

The wind meter or Anemometer that measures
wind speed and direction.

Display

• LED backlight
• Automatic backlight control

Power

• AC adapter for automatic backlight control
• Batteries not included: 10 AA

Using the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station

After setup we get a warning that a thunderstorm
is in our area.

After mounting the various sensors you'll want to go in and setup the base station where it can receive the best signal from the wireless sensors. We recommend a back porch for the sensors and then a kitchen or living room for the main base station. You are going to get the most out of the weather station where you'll see it the most. That's also one of the best reasons to own a weather station - you really get to see how the weather local to you changes just about every hour.

The weather alert radio that's included features NOAA SAME Technology. That means you can tell the weather station where you are and the local weather alert channels will tell you weather alerts local to you. Since we live in Middlesex County in Massachusetts, we got lots of thunderstorm and other weather alerts over the past few weeks. You can have the alerts come on automatically or you can just choose to see the alert flash and hit the weather radio button on the top.

Enjoying Wind Speed and Direction

As the wind blows you get the data.

We never thought we'd find wind speed and direction so much fun but we did. The weather station comes with a remote anemometer that measures wind speed and direction and it's very simple to understand how important this can be to your weather filled day. On a hot day with a little wind - let's say 2mph - it can make a big difference in the hot weather feeling cool. Also knowing where the wind is coming from - North, South, East, or West (or other combinations), it made it easy to tell whether the local beach here in Arlington would be getting any of that precious wind. We really liked the way the main weather station features a round display with an arrow that animates as the wind direction and speed changes.

Measuring Rain Fall

This is the one feature we were dying to see work. Since we have hard clay soil here in Arlington, MA - we can get some really bad water situations with lots of rainfall. We also were dying to know how much a typical thunderstorm provided in inches of rain, and how much that would mean to our garden and other outdoor plants.

We were blessed with a whopper of a thunderstorm on the 5th night of using the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station and it dropped over .1 inches of rain in less than 20 minutes. The rain gauge worked really well, and as the water evaporates in the rain gauge, you get a new reading on a new rainfall. Amazing.

Measuring Temperature and Humidity

The outdoor temperature and hygrometer sends data to the main
base station. You can also see it on the small LED display.

On the right hand side the main base station tells you the indoor
temperature and humidity, and the outside tells you what's going on in
the larger weather world.

We love having indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity. Why? In order to prevent mold from growing or for humidity and moisture from harming your house, you want to keep your house cool and dry. The dual temperatures and humidity reading give you an understating of yes the weather outside and inside, but also on how your indoor weather is doing against the larger forces of nature. We love knowing it's a bit cooler and dryer inside or at least in the comfort range of humidity less than 60%.

Measuring Barometric Pressure

This feature is one of the best ways to tell how the weather is trending for the day. If pressure is going down - or low pressure coming in, you can expect things to cloud up or potentially rain. High pressure will drive out clouds and produce sun. If you are thinking about going out for the day and rain is forecast, and you see low pressure, think twice. We found the barometric pressure readings on the base station to trend well with the Lacrosse weather station we have. Another useful piece of info is also in this area - the moon phase. So if you're looking for moon phase info for tidal trends - this is a good place to get the reminder.

Downloading Weather Data to your PC

You can hook up the Honeywell TN924W via USB
to your computer and save weather data.

A very polished java based program captures
and shows you the data.

We didn't go into detail on saving out weather data from the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station, but from what we tested it works very well. You can save or have the PC hooked up to the weather station at all times if you like, and that allows for a more detailed drill down of the information. The weather station can store up to 200 weather records without PC connection.

Thoughts and Uses for the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station

You might ask yourself - "Why would I get a home weather station?" You might be weather obsessed, or you may just want to get a better idea of weather local to you. You can also use it as a gardener, someone trying to make sure humidity and other factors aren't hurting their home, and you can get a better idea if it's safe to go out on that long bike ride and not hit a thunderstorm. It's also got to be an amazing device in the winter an other storms where the weather conditions can also change dramatically. We love having the NOAA alerts (saved us twice from going to the park and not getting rained on), and we really love the detailed local weather forecasts you get using the free NOAA service.

Also comparing the La Crosse Technology WS-7049U Mahogany Wireless Weather Station with Remote Temperature Sensor to the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station was a good way to get an idea if spending $300 on a total solution was worth it. We think so. Having the rain and wind information really gave us the full picture of how dry, hot, tepid, etc. the weather was that day, and the long term data on the PC gave us a bit more of an understanding on why our lawn looks a bit brown and we might want to water. Sure spending $300 is a bit more than say $79, but you are getting a much better weather outlook, forecast, and also being warned of bad weather.

We liked comparing the temperature and humidity readings of both, and found both the Lacrosse and Honeywell to be within a few tenths of a degree in both temperature and humidity.

So in conclusion we really like the Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station. It does the trick and really scratches the Weather Snob's weather itch.

Pros:

Easy set up provided you go step by step in the manual
Indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity readings
User-friendly sunrise & sunset calculator
Weather alerts are local to you
Wind speed is fun to see
Rain gauge great for gardeners

Cons:

Sensors take batteries - would like to plug some of them in for winter use

At Honeywelland Honeywell TN924W Complete Wireless Home Weather Station

Review: Honeywell Atomic Projection Clock with Indoor Temperature - Jun 23, 2008
Review: Oregon Scientific WMR200 Professional Weather Station - Jun 20, 2008
Review: Honeywell WeatherTime In-Out-Thermometer and Alarm Clock - May 30, 2008

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Posted by Jay Brewer at July 16, 2007 9:40 AM

I am sorry but I have to disagree with this review. Maybe its just bad luck, but I would call it poor quality. I have gone through TWO of these systems, the first had a broken backlight, the second has a broken rain gauge.

Other problems: The software which comes with it is NOT VISTA compatible. The system does not do a good job of tracking humidity, pressure, and temperature -- what I mean is that I have other systems installed near the same location and they all match very closely to the airport 5 miles away...this system is typically off by several degrees, pressure points, and percentages. Finally the design of the system requires to you to frequently access the buttons on the back of the unit to see the history trends and that requires you to turn the unit around or over, making it very inconvenient.

I think this system is designed for someone who doesn't want to take their weather monitoring seriously or which is looking for a very basic entry-level system. It is too bad because it does have some nice potential, only to be overshadowed by its flaws.

Posted by: Joshua at June 25, 2008 3:41 PM

Sorry you've had issues with two units - bummer. We really enjoyed this weather station but did only have it for about 2 months. We've recently reviewed the Oregon Scientific WMR-200 and had it for over a year with no issues - however it doesn't have that many software options like this unit.

Posted by: Jay Brewer at June 25, 2008 3:50 PM