Hi, this looks obviously like a broken probe (or even worse a defective hardware). And yes, every probe is tested by the probe manufacturer several times in all stages of the production process. Due to the very complicated production process unfortunately this couldn't eliminate 100% defective probes (yet), but we did endless optimizations to reduce the likelihood of DOA or quick lost of performance. Meanwhile we have sensor version 15. Also I need to add that ALL customers, whose probe died too early within our warranty period got a FREE replacement, shipping costs paid by GHL. That said we must admit that we are more than irritated about this "product review". Why did you never approach GHL DIRECTLY in order to sort problems out? (If you did then I am sorry that I can't recall, in that case we should review that case again). Or was this not intended to be a fair and neutral "review"? Was this video done with the intention to bash GHL to please the GHL haters and to promote other brands? This is all GHL has to say at this point about this video. We are looking forward to get contacted by you directly in order to fix this problem and to get a true and non biased video at the end. Thanks for your attention.

Great work Sam, Awesome to see a honest review! definitely what new reefers need thx.

I think it saved me from buying one of these. Hope there better ones come out soon. Looking forward to seeing the new hanna Magnesium test kits

Thanks for sharing those results Sam! I was really hoping to see something useable, but those results were anything but. I’d love to hear GHL’s response/explanation for such inconsistency. This video saved me a lot of coin :) thanks!

Thanks for the review. I was thinking of buying one but will hold off for now. Hopefully they can work all the minor problems out. When setting up my profilux I had nothing but problems connecting it to the network and this video reminded me that I am in no rush to do that again with the director.

I'm happy I have a mindfulness routine with my testing of 3 tanks Sunday morning. I am not tempted to automate it one single bit :) Illuminating review!

Thanks for the honest review Sam, you may just have saved many reefers an expensive lesson. I hope the manufacturers reach out to you with an offer of a second device to test. If they are confident in their product I think they should. If they don't, it may tell us a lot.

Thanks Sam, such a great video. Love that you are totally honest, it means a lot!! Honesty is the whole point with making a video. I have the Profilux and the KH Director and I was thinking about the ION Director,like seriously planning for it. You just made up my mind, I’ll wait. Both the Profilux and the KH Director are really hard to connect to any network as well. And also, I don’t really trust the KH Director when it swings. It would be great to know for sure…

Thank you for the honest feedback. I personally will never have another automatic water tester again after the GHL KH director. The device has been off since I set it up. I reset it up probably another 20 times since and get the same results. Even when it is consistent it’s still off by 15-20% of what my other testers read.

Thank you for your sacrifice, Parker. 🙃

Omg! I had bought one and already waiting for post more than two years:). I think I may will cancel it. Thanks for sharing those results Sam!

Thank god there are honest videos like yours around to save people a lot money on products that just don't work! I for one won't be wasting mine on this unfortunately based on these crazy results haha

great vid and thank just saved my a lot of money as was going to order one lol

Xepta was working on this years ago and didn’t release it as a product because they couldn’t get consistent results. I was wondering what type of engineering GHL did to get it to work - maybe the same engineering they’ve been doing to their software for the past 5 years.

@parkers reef out of curious, was the temperature consistent in the bucket? I don't have an ion director yet, but I do know temps can throw off refractometers and some titration testing.

Cheers for time spent on these Sam really saves people wasting money on them. I have the Profilux 4 set up with some dosers which are pretty good. Next step was to get the KHD but now not so sure! I've gone through the list of auto testers, reefbot, mastertronic and feel like they just don't work. If you need to check the results regularly with Hanna's to keep it consistent its like you said a pretty pointless item. I'm a member of the GHL Facebook group and when you see people question the ION's results the GHL representative always seems to pipe up with you should trust a lab grade sensor such as the ION Director rather than Hanna's which is not good on their part.

Wow this is eye opening. Hopefully you have a defective unit given your networking issues, but I doubt it. Just looks like their water testing device doesn't work, period. Good work, this is why I vote you for best reefing youtuber! You're putting out better content than BRStv.

do you think a Salinity Probe Stability kit by VCA is worth a try as they claim it provides a safe way to avoid results that are fouled by micro bubbles or debris?

Wow if that was my heart reading . I would be in cardiac arrest. Thanks for sharing. Nice job...

Hi Parker - this is an interesting dilemma sadly. Especially with the response from GHL. I'm not a normal follower but what I know as I pass by your content and watch it you come across as a pretty unbiased hobbyist who is sharing their passion on it. Doesn't matter if it is visiting a store, a fish or coral loss, design, product, or what have you. You always seem pretty level headed, calm, honest. Even more concerning is their comment about not approaching them. Leads me to now question other reviews such that they have been provided "known" kits rather than how you did it (unknown, open box) which is what we would see. Take care - you are doing great. Remember - I see unbiased, calm, level headed. A hobbyist. All the best to you and yours!

Unfortunately, I feel the same way. I was persuaded to buy profilx, kh director and ion director and the computer has now been unplugged for over a year. Everything is quite difficult to use, the store has constant shortages of probes. Unfortunately, I invested a lot of money in equipment that I wouldn't even sell to my enemy.

Given my experience with the KHD it may be surprising that I really wanted this to work so I could consider it in the future (should I have enough coin to have someone else set it up). Now I won't have any FOMO about it. Funny thing is that it looks to me like 5 overlayed results from my KHD - they may start looking good and start to drift or just go absolutely crazy (crazy is better because you know it's wrong). Unfortunate but then again they need to be a lot better.

Ok interesting once again thank you. This means one of three things 1. the probe dried out and is failing 2. this explains why you can’t buy them at the minute 3. They still have not updated anything in15 years. So what do you do in Aus for automation the apex you can’t have the power bars so it won’t work properly and ghl is $$$ and won’t work. So in your opinion what do we do here in Aus

All I can say is they have to go back to the drowning board and make it easier to set up and better test readings. For all I can see it's still way off reliable. Or maybe a faulty probe , when you open the box it didn't come the way it supposed to be packed up. 🤔 any ways not for me at this point. Thanks for the video Sam!

Couldn’t agree more I got a trident and it’s been very disappointing for myself.

Even though I think the Trident is not well made. At least the results are consistent so at least I can use it for trends and then test to confirm.

I have some other and more stable results over last 14 days (measuring daily): Calcium: Average 410, min 409 and max 412. Magnesium: Average 1327, min 1320 and max 1332. Potassium: Average 394, min 391 and max 396. Sodium: Average 9552, min 9440 and max 9637. Nitrate has been 0 all time and I run it low, but I have difficulty getting good reading on nitrate below 5.

Hey Sam, I gave in recently and went with a Neptune setup; Apex, trident and DOS. I hated the idea of going with old technology but I have come to think of it now as "mature technology". Finding GHL in Canada is difficult, support I suspect is nil. The Coralvue stuff is interesting but availability is not there. If these companies want reefers to purchase products then they need to get them out in the wild where they can be seen and purchased. I had a similar thought about lighting last year. The shops here all had Radion lights, I concluded that if Kessil wanted market share they should get their gear into the shops over the coral tanks where reefers see them being used. (reefers emulate what they see) They were late to the party and I now see Neptune Sky over the frag tanks. The Radions were replaced and sold off. I do find it funny that March (Fragbox) mentioned how many vendors had Kessil over their tanks at Reefapalooza.

I sold off my ghl kh director and got alkatronic,then got the mastertronic which I highly recommend but sadly not cheap

100% you got a defective probe, I had the same. They are still having these issues and I've been told they are improving the production process. I guess it would be nice if they have better quality assurance but maybe they just don't want to do a wet/dry cycle on each probe. Now I got a new probe from the latest batch and it seems to give perfectly stable results, but I only have it running for a few days. I suggest you open a ticket so they can send you a new probe. Good material for a follow-up video 😉

hey, I think you have a faulty device here. nontheless GHL's reaction is far from mature. Did you ever got a new/ replacement probe/ unit and if so what were the results then? would love to see an update on a working device

You should also do a new review on the Mastertronic it also have a lot of issues and no reviewer tells you that! It is all great and the new big reefing thing but these expensive machines all have problems. IMO it's a scandal they sell these expensive products and blaiming customers If it don't performs as it should be. I am in the reefing hobby for more then 10 years and I have seen a lot of reefing product that are problematic and don't work how they should be, and the funny thing nobody talks about it. Thank you for your honest review, keep up the good work!

Not all that fussed about variation between ICP and Ion Director reading. What is important to me is consistency of the reading and it seems that this fails.

Im actually moving away from over complicated setups like this, for me KHG connected to 2 well calibrated dose heads to equal part alk and cal im also seperate dosing 4 litres a day of kalkwasser, im seeing 80% alk and cal supply from kalk and the khg picks up the rest. Kalk runs out the KHG saves the day. Water changes keep mag in check. Parker can u do a KHG static test ? Love to see the stability. Also KHG please reduce your reagent "acid water" from $50 to a fair $10 , i want more khg units and one hour tests. Temped to try my own reagent with food dye, as i believe the khg bricks the unit if they see pure clear reagent.

Not surprised by these results at all. Sad that with the amount of time they've delayed this product, GHL still haven't released something that works consistently.

I can’t quite believe what I just read, that can’t be a genuine response from GHL can it? That’s a disgrace. I own a KH Director and to be fair am very happy with it. I ordered an ION Director from GHL but after 12/18 months of delays and pretty poor to no communication I gave up and got a refund. I’m glad I did. I found this to be a great, honest, objective review.

Cant wait for a single product to test all accurately. Manufacturers really need to come up with something that's compact and boring looking to fit nicely in the limited space in the cabinet.

I can't see me purchasing one of these now

Imagine how a new Reefer would try to interpret and react to those results… ha

Thanks mate , I don’t think I’ll gamble $ 2000 on it

Hi, you are reviewing and testing the performance of a broken product. This is not fair, you should not use broken products for review and you should get a working one. This is clearly shown by the errors you get from the device. Alas, GHL has quite a high number of devices that don't work out of the box, this is in itself another problem for this price range. Mine worked, a friend of mine's did not, it had to change to probe as the one it came with was having bad performance issues. I tried to leave a ss with the history but comment did not post.

Спасибо за обзор, им по ходу надо доработать это устройство, а пока это просто дорогая игрушка, ну это сугубо моё мнение.

I admit I accepted years ago that thse things simply don't work .

The pic behind you looks like a bunch of alien ‘probes’ 😂 Have you reached out to GHL?

Some time has passed and I got zero support von GHL. Last month I purchased a new multi ion probe (Version 17). The first couple readings was okay. But after a view days the sensor performance is between 0% an 60%. I cannot recommend to buy a ION Director, it is garbage. On the other way I love my KH Director. Anyway, they promised a cool device and I feel like a moron that I have owned a ION Director. Actually they should take back my ION Director because they promised accurate readings and a lifespan of 6 to 12 month. I don't know what I should do. Sell it for some dollar or put them out of service and waiting Years to get a multi probe that works.

Sounds like typical first gen product issues. Other brands of similar devices have had similar issues and not something i would want to use until either it can be made more accurate or either cheap enough where you can have two and automate two so that if both units test the same within 0.5% of each other for example then dose xyz etc. A long time friend of mine had one of these and ended up selling it due to inaccurate readings and then when it would give proper readings when tested with other methods he could never trust it. When you have in excess of 20k in corals and livestock these things have to be accurate or have fault tolerances built in.

Good I canceled the order, that very much sounds like the results of KHD… no more GHL

LIKE LIKE LIKE im brasiliam

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I've had a few GHL stand-alone dose in the past and I still use one now via PC because I've tried tirelessly for days to get the app to work but gave up, and I'm a big fan...... of the doser, of their brand, of their products, BUT, I have to be totally honest, everything about their software is garbage. A simple firmware update screws many users up, days and days of trying to connect to internet connections. routers, servers, wi-fi anything like that is garbage. Small companies with less reputation and, may I say it, less experience make GHL software, the setup, the running of apps etc etc etc, look like amateurs and not to mention Mac users are screwed. GHL get your act together, if you have to fire your software engineers then do it, they are WAY BEHIND the times as far as application is concerned. It seems to me that it is intentionally made difficult in an attempt to make the user look stupid and their engineers computer geeks and wizards that are the only ones who can work this crap. Sam Parker has NEVER in all the years I have been following him, done anything other than an honest review on everything he has ever tried and tested. Not for a second did he say or insinuate in that review or any review that he was anti GHL or would love to stick the knife in, this is childish and ridiculous to even contemplate. GHL can't handle the truth and once this GHL doser I have stops working, I won't replace it with another GHL, NOT until they get their software up to date and foolproof like many, many other brands have already done. This is a PR disaster for GHL and quite honestly, it's overdue.

So basically it's a very expensive door stop. :-(

That looks like a defect Unit or sensors GHL should do better than This

should just spam the crap out of ghl lol

lol

Seems like one of those beta pieces of equipment a company releases on the public to figure out all of the problems for them. Should be taken off the market until it works right if this is the norm.

shite

I have a IOND and a KHD from GHL. Also, I like to support the local industry here in Germany, and with this bonding it is easier to spend money to high quality products. I also loved the great support of GHL and had very good experience in general. The IOND is for me just a additional device which complete the more important KHD. But recently I got really disappointed and even shocked with GHL. I got my IOND last christmas after 2 years of waiting. The results and are inconsistent and wrong from the beginning. I was really forgiving of the performance and tried without reclamation and just informed GHL about my experience. In the end the sensor died after more than six month and dosen't made a good job at any time. Anyway, GHL knows the history and I asked for support in august 2022. They even don´t react to my support request till today. Therefore I aksed at the GHL Forum other customer if the performance of the new sensors are increased. Yes, other Customer told me that the new sensor are maybe better. But I could not answer the other customer because the thread was closed by GHL. And this was the shocking point. GHL doesn´t react to my support request but they give harsh answer on the thread and closed them. I still got no support from GHL, they seems really pissed off here community!? This is a really bad trend by GHL and made me sad. Yes, the start o this new device was maybe hard for GHL and the crowd got a little bit pissed of. But this is a very bad handling with the costumers and make maybe a sustainable damage. My advice to GHL is a stoical handling with the customers!!! Even the if the customer are wrong sometimes! And please update the whole software system to a independent and easy to use software. Anyway, GHL say on here website that they don´t wanna change here software because it is to much work. But you know what, there are big competition going on and further GHL is going to break their strong bondings with here customers. You know what. Each new electronic device have a smart version with a app, blue tooth an WLAN. Recently I was thinking about a GHL computer. But I am not a strong bonding customer anymore. I put recently a thermometer/Hygrometer from switch bot under knee my tank and a wireless power switch from AVM. The apps are running perfect and I need no more automation. I am glad about the cheap big market of electronic products...

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