4 Of The Best Home Weather Stations, According To Experts

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Keeping up with changing weather is important for your safety and comfort. Temperature fluctuations could mean setting your thermostat to heat or air conditioning before you leave for the day. A forecast that includes rain could encourage you to bring an umbrella or even cancel outdoor plans. It's also a good idea to check the weather along your driving route before starting a road trip.

While weather apps and regional forecasts are good sources for general weather conditions, even the top weather forecasters were wrong about 15% of the time. Even worse, they can't accurately report microclimate conditions, sometimes referred to as microweather, around your home, such as localized rainfall amounts, wind speed, and temperature. For pinpoint weather accuracy, you'll need to invest in a home weather station.

Most home weather stations, among the best smart garden products worth trying yourself, typically include instruments for measuring rainfall, wind (speed and direction), temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure, although less expensive models may provide fewer sensors. Our selection of the best home weather stations recommended by experts ranges in price from under $100 to a few hundred bucks.

The Spruce, a publisher of home and garden tips, ranked the La Crosse Technology Weather Station as the "Best Value" in a recent round of testing. Its reviewers found the affordable weather station had an easily-understood display and acceptable accuracy for temperature reporting. While the Spruce listed the La Crosse Weather Station's price on Amazon at $53, current data puts the price at $79.99.

The La Crosse Weather Station includes an LCD screen that clearly displays the current time and date, indoor and outdoor relative humidity, and temperature, including highs, lows, and trends. The unit provides a 12-hour forecast based on barometric pressure readings, displayed as simple weather-related images. With its simple setup and low price, the La Crosse Weather Station could serve beginners well, but it lacks sensors to measure rainfall and wind.

Most consumer reviews agree with the Spruce's findings concerning the La Crosse Weather Station's accuracy and ease of setup. While there is no app or Wi-FI connectivity, that's part of the unit's charm.

The New York Times lists the AcuRite Iris Weather Station, Amazon list priced as low as $139.99, as an affordable option, and it has more features than the La Crosse unit. The Iris Weather Station measures five weather conditions: temperature, humidity, wind, rain, and barometric pressure. While the Iris measures indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, testing by the NY Times found its accuracy to be suspect. However, other weather measurements, such as rainfall and changes to barometric pressure, were more accurate.

The Iris features easy setup and provides 12-hour forecasting by combining your location's elevation with barometric pressure data. An additional feature, not provided by the La Crosse weather station, is up to 31 days of past readings on AcuRite's free plan. Recent Amazon reviewers report numerous problems connecting to the app, so if advanced features are important to you, this may be among the smart devices you should avoid having in your home. Still, the Iris offers useful features at a bargain price with accuracy issues that some users can overlook.

Since the best home weather station for each individual varies based on their specific needs and weather reporting goals, undertaking a Raspberry Pi project to create your backyard weather station may work for you. However, if you don't have that much time to tinker, the Ambient Weather WS-2000 topped multiple expert lists for best home weather station. You'll note that its $299.99 Amazon price kept it out of the running for the budget-friendly category.

The NY Times reports the WS-2000 beat out the other home weather stations in its two-month test, remaining consistently accurate and maintaining its signal connection. Gear Lab agrees, naming the WS-2000 as the "Best High-End Weather Station" among the group of 10 it tested in the United Kingdom. Gear Lab's list of WS-2000 pros includes its accuracy and ability to archive and export data. However, Gear Lab, the NY Times, and Amazon reviewers agree that setting up the WS-2000 is difficult.

Aside from the setup frustrations expressed by consumer and expert reviewers, feedback for the WS-2000 is positive. The unit comes with a color display screen that shows readings for internal and external conditions like temperature and humidity, and outdoor weather using the included rain gauge and wind vane for direction and speed. However, the WS-2000 allows adding additional sensors to the unit's base features to measure parameters, including a mix of indoor and outdoor air quality, lightning detection, water leak detectors, soil moisture sensors, etc.

Gear Lab lists the Ambient Weather WS-2902 Osprey Home Weather Station, $199.99 on Amazon, as the "Best Overall Weather Station." The WS-2902 received high marks for accuracy and features in Gear Lab testing, but lost points for its "time-consuming assembly process," much like the other Ambient Weather unit on our list. Gear Lab found the WS-2902 accurately recorded typical weather data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and rainfall, while adding measurements for solar radiation, wind chill, and heat index if desired. These features combine to make it one of the smart gardening gadgets you'll want to get before spring arrives.

In addition, Ambient Weather provides a usable app, a feature that's hit or miss among other home weather station brands. The app is viewable from nearly any connected device and provides a simple interface to check the current temperature, wind speed, and humidity. Or use it to create graphic displays of collected weather data. There's even a unique social network of other Ambient Weather Station operators sharing local weather readings to compare your data, or see what's going on elsewhere.

Rounding up this list of four of the best home weather stations involved digging through a number of expert reviews. While we mentioned reviews from the NY Times, the Spruce, and Gear Lab, expert sources such as TechHive and Wired recommended some of these home weather stations several years ago. We didn't include those older reviews here as the technology and products have evolved over time, solving the minor faults those reviewers found when those reviews were written.

Once we had a list of expert-recommended home weather stations, we dug into actual user reviews to verify which units belonged on the list and technical specs to understand the features of each unit. We also made sure the prices were up to date at the time of writing to provide accurate information to our readers.