We have Herpstat Pro's, Herpstat ND's, Helix, Ranco's, and 1 Newtek.
The Newtek works well for a person on a tight budget since they only cost around $40. Only thing with them is they don't have a read out so you have to get a seperate thermometer and they are on/off type T-stats. It has been very reliable over the last year and a half. Give it **
Ranco T-stats can handle some heavy loads. Only down side to the Ranco is again it is an On/Off. This works well on well insulated incubators or racks, but the clicking will drive you nuts on a rack that is not insulated so well. These are also very robust and reliable. Definately *** out of 5 and depending on the day you ask I might give it ****!
Helix was the first proportional I tried and they work well enough. Only thing with them is you have to buy a seperate module for Nite drop. Also having to scroll all the way through the T-stats range to reduce the temp by 1 degree gets pretty annoying while you are first setting things up, but once everything is set up it is no longer an issue. I give it *** starts mainly due to lack of features for the cost. I could easily get my own thermo couple and some resisters and a power transister and make my own proportional T-stat that does what this does at a fraction of the cost. Granted I work with electronics pretty heavily.
Herpstat Pro and Herpstat ND are top of the line for T-stats that are heavily used in the reptile industry. You can't beat the flexibility of a herpstat pro. High and low alarms, temp probe failure alarm, night drop feature set up by an internal clock, internet connection that allows it to phone your cell phone if any alarms go off, and the plug type probe makes it nice if you ever do have a temp probe failure. I give this T-stat all ***** out of 5. It is a very well thought out product. Only negative is the low and high alarms can be triggered during a night drop cycle if you don't give them enough span. Definately one day when I have some extra play money I want to get Spyder robotics humidity control and play with it a little. With as excellent as their T-stat is I'm sure the humidity control would be a fun toy to play with.
I had read about a proportional T-stat that is used over seas and it looked pretty good, the only problem I see is it is set up for 50 Hz operation. Other than that issue it looked like it had even more features than the herpstat.
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