Rachio hose timer review: Is this smart gardening accessory worth it?

Sometimes it’s nice to turn on the hose without having to harness the mental and physical energy required to go outside. There, I said it—and we’re not about to feel bad about it.

If you live in Florida like I do, it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the surface of the driveway half the year, and there’s nothing wrong with wishing you could jump-start your sprinkler from the comfort of an air-conditioned room with an app-controlled hose timer.

I’ve previously tested the Orbit B-hyve Hose Timer with great success, but it left me looking for something with fewer bells and whistles. The Rachio Smart Hose Timer Starter Kit
(available at Amazon for $99.99)

is about as straightforward as it gets, and is made by the same company behind our favorite smart sprinkler controller.

Rachio’s smart hose timer is one of the more expensive options out there, so is it worth it? Here’s what I think.

About the Rachio Smart Hose Timer

The Rachio Smart Hose Timer is a battery-powered smart valve that allows you to control a standard garden hose using the Rachio smartphone app (available for iOS and Android).

The timer connects to your internet—2.4 GHz only, please—via the included Wi-Fi Hub, which plugs into a standard two-prong outlet.

Using the Rachio app, you can create and manage schedules to replace hand-watering, enable weather-based automation and manage multiple outdoor faucets at once. Importantly, you can also control the valve manually using a large button on the face of the device in the event of a Wi-Fi outage (or, you know, close proximity to the faucet).

The model I tested features one timer valve and is priced at $99.99, inclusive of a required Wi-Fi hub. Each hub is compatible with up to four devices.

The timer is compact, measuring in at 3-inches x 1.875-inches x 6.5 inches, and Rachio recommends at least eight inches of clearance around your outdoor faucet to account for the device and a hose.

The timer valve is tested up to 200 PSI (10-100 PSI is the manufacturer’s recommendation for use) and can withstand temperatures ranging from 33°F to 158°F.

What we like

This hose timer is simple to set up

The Rachio Hose Timer Starter Kit’s packaging states that set-up can be completed in 10 minutes or less. My experience wasn’t quite that efficient, but the device was by no means difficult to install, and I had things up and running in less than a half hour, inclusive of firmware updates to the device and the hub.

After downloading the Rachio app, I filled out a short form to create an account and received an email confirmation immediately. Once logged in, first-time users are asked to add a “Home” in the app and set up the Wi-Fi hub. The hub and the valve both connected in the app—and to each other—without problems.

This hose timer offers a quality app with clear scheduling

It’s easy to overlook a smooth user experience, but the Rachio app is one of the product’s highlights, without question. The design is clean, and each device in a user’s “Home” includes tabs for “Events” (past and upcoming watering sessions), “Valves” (the user’s devices) and “Schedules” (predetermined schedules, set by the user according to the day of week or a set interval between days).

Separately, the app also boasts a Weather Intelligence feature that automatically skips watering sessions when rain is expected or detected in the area.

In the app, you can set a “rain skip threshold” along a spectrum ranging from 1/16-inch (“wet”) to 3/4-inch (“soaked”), and the projected weather is checked automatically 12 hours and 1 hour before each scheduled session.

Rachio’s Weather Intelligence aggregates data from more than 300,000 weather stations and other hyperlocal weather sources. However, you can also choose to select a specific weather station in your area.

Additionally, the app notifies you when batteries are dead or if the timer has lost its wireless connection.

The Rachio Hose Timer has an impressive range, and the signal is reliable

The Rachio Smart Hose Timer promotes a range of up to 200 feet with no obstructions, which I confirmed during my testing. I had no issues connecting outside from all corners of the property, and I did not experience any problems connecting through the plaster and concrete walls while inside.

The delay, even from the far reaches of the yard, was minimal when starting a manual session, and the valve can also be easily controlled using a large blue button on the face of the device.

What we don’t like

A proprietary hub is required to use the Rachio Hose Timer

It can already be frustrating to have to set up a second piece of technology so that you can use the device you purchased, so if you’re put off by the need for any sort of Wi-Fi hub you will be disappointed to learn that you need one here.

The good news is, the hub is included with the hose timer, so you only have to make one purchase. But smart home hubs are becoming less and less common for individual devices, and I wish the hose timer had built-in Wi-Fi.

For what it’s worth, the Orbit B-hyve Hose Timer I previously tested also came with a standalone Wi-Fi hub that is required for use.

While the Rachio Wi-Fi hub works once it is fully updated, I found that the initial firmware updates required for both the hub and the valve itself took significantly longer than advertised—although it still only took a matter of minutes.

There’s no smart home integration

Perhaps the biggest miss with the Rachio Smart Hose Timer is its lack of smart home features. Currently, the device is not compatible with Alexa, HomeKit, or Google Assistant, which feels like a necessity and no such integrations have been announced.

This is an especially odd omission since Rachio makes a smart sprinkler controller, which happens to be our No. 1 choice, that works with all three major smart home platforms.

Push notifications are also not yet available, but are planned for release later this year—another feature we’d expect to come standard at a $100 price point in 2023.

There are also no recommended watering schedules baked into the app, which felt like a missed opportunity for those who want the valve to do the thinking for them.

The value is questionable for the money

It’s not that a crisp Benjamin is too much to pay for a quality device of this nature—it’s just that it feels like a lot to pay for this one, which is brilliant in its simplicity but still ultimately lacks some of the basic features available in other competing products.

Frankly, the price tag seemed a bit high for a product that didn’t come with the batteries required for operation.

In the Rachio’s defense, it’s easier to set up and has a simpler interface than the Orbit B-Hvve XD hose timer, but the B-Hyve comes at a lower price point and offers more of those aforementioned “bells and whistles.”

Ultimately it’s a value proposition that comes down to your needs and your comfort level with technology.

Should you buy the Rachio Smart Hose Timer Starter Kit?

Yes, it works well but is missing a few smart features

The Rachio Hose Timer Starter Kit works as advertised, and the required hub produces a strong signal. The app is easy to use and it is very simple to set up, helping automate a task for me, like watering my front yard, so I don’t have to break a sweat when going outside to do so.

While it’s missing smart home support, like Alexa control, that the comparable Orbit B-Hvve XD hose timer has, Rachio’s smart hose timer still works well. One issue I took with the Orbit hose timer was that the weather skip functionality was a bit finicky. I had a much more reliable and accurate experience when testing the Rachio hose timer, but it does cost almost $40 more and, at the time of publication, doesn’t send push alerts.

If you are OK forgoing the smart home controls in favor of using only the app, and waiting for push notifications to be available later this year, then the Rachio Smart Hose Timer Starter Kit is a slam dunk for remote control over watering your garden and lawn.

Buy at Amazon

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.