Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsPromising tech but doesn't produce reliable data
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2019
I don't typically write reviews (this is my first ever) however I wanted to for this device as I think it would be helpful for both users and for the developers.
First off, this device combines a lot of nice tech into a small and cheap package. The code reading depth of Bluedriver and live data monitoring really can't be matched at this price point. Sadly, none of these features really worked right and I think the developers have bitten off more than they can chew.
I used this device with an iPhone X on iOS 12.1 to diagnose a 2004 Chrysler Concorde and a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan. Installing the app was easy, however I had frequent issues with Bluetooth loosing connection. I could always resolve this by unplugging Bluedriver, restarting the app or a combination of both. I updated Bluedriver to the latest firmware (2.44 at the time) and I didn't see an improvement.
The loss of connectivity usually occurred when my phone screen turned off. Many times Bluedriver would only be able to read OBDII data and not advanced data until I restarted the app. This can be a real issue for smog test readiness indicators, misleading the less advanced users of this product. Bluedriver indicated that my vehicle would pass when it clearly would have failed. When Bluedriver ends up in this state, many readiness indicators will become unavailable to Bluedriver such as the evap and catalyst systems. Since Bluedriver, can’t see them and all the ones it sees are marked as ready, Bluedriver calls this a pass.
I used Bluedriver to diagnose an oxygen sensor and an ABS wheel sensor. Bluedriver did produce the right codes for both of these conditions however on many instances Bluedriver also produces 10 or 20 additional fault codes that simply didn't exist. On my first scan, Bluedriver gave me the correct codes however it also indicated that my ABS and BCM computers had internal faults followed by other codes that really made no sense. Based on the codes, I was concerned that I would need to replace these modules and began researching these faults. However, later on when I read codes again, I got far fewer codes; codes that I was confident actually existed. This is when I learned that Bluedriver often reports garbage data. In general, the top error codes are correct and then the trailing ones are garbage. I learned to identify the garbage ones by simply scanning again and seeing which ones persisted.
I attempted to diagnose an oxygen sensor with live data. Oxygen sensors switch about every 100 ms on a good sensor. Sadly, Bluedriver would only update about once a second, even with displaying just a single sensor. This doesn't make diagnosing an oxygen sensor impossible, it just means that the data that you are seeing is only a rough approximation of what is actually happening.
This problem actually is insignificant in comparison to what I later discovered. Bluedriver was actually injecting garbage data into the stream. The PCM in the vehicle was throwing P0138, indicating that an oxygen sensor was stuck high. When viewing the data stream, the stream would show a switching quality on all 4 oxygen sensors, indicating that all sensors were working correctly. None of the data was duplicated either, meaning the PCM wasn’t simply supplementing the oxygen sensor data with good data from another sensor. I was really really confused by this for a couple days. At some point I tried to live view the vehicle speed sensor, only to find that while driving the vehicle, Bluedriver would frequently show the vehicle speed as 0 while the vehicle was in motion on the highway. The speedometer in the vehicle never dropped out. I realized that the switching quality I was seeing was not from the oxygen sensor but from garbage data. At this point, I changed the oxygen sensor and the code went away. The graph looked the same before and after changing the sensor. Essentially, this makes diagnosing many sensors and their connections impossible with Bluedriver. Sensors often intermittently fail and this tool will actually make it more challenging to find the issue.
I’m returning Bluedriver. I really wanted to keep it. I like to fix my own stuff and the live data and the in depth code scanning really made sense to me at this price point. The reality is, this device is a diagnostics tool and it made diagnosing my problems much more difficult than just a regular code scanner without live data would have. I can deal with bugs in apps, bad UI and things that crash over and over again however I can’t deal with bad data. It really soured the whole thing for me.
I respect the vision of this company. This product has the ability to take on other big names like Snap-On, however, I recommend that users stay away from this product until these issues are fixed. I also recommend to the developers to really focus on data integrity over anything else. This is a tool and people need to trust their tools.