It's 2011 and I've had mine for about a month now.
The guys at the Leslie's (4 blocks away) said that the earlier models (<2010?) had electrodes that would corrode quickly in salt water but that they had been changed this year and they haven't had any problems. Understanding Leslie's return policy I dove in and got one at the $199 sale price (pun intended).
Looking on the web I found that they even have an update program for this version (version 2). I ran the update, it worked fine (from Win XP 32 bit, not from Win7 64 bit), but there was no info on version number or changes or fixes so I don't know if it's any better or different from the stock programming.
I did not want something to replace my TF-100, rather I wanted something that would warn me when I needed to use my TF out of normal schedule, and that's pretty much what this does. My pool tends to be unstable sometimes (sudden chlorine loads, temperature changes, leaves, etc) While not what I would like to have, it serves a purpose with the following caveats and features:
- the pH value is not perfectly accurate but close enough to alert on wide swings. It also has a limit setter that lets you change what values the pH can be before alarm.
- the temperature seems to be a few degrees above the four or five other thermometers I've used
- the cl level is only either >2 or alarm. Good enough to warn about sudden dropouts but I of course would have liked to see the actual value.
- When the pH or chlorine level is changed to correct an alarm, you have to wait for an 8 hour stabilization period before it works again. Really irritating but not a deal breaker
- When first starting up the system needs one hour to initialize
I purchased it while I was cleaning up from an algae bloom caused by a drop in salt and subsequent non-functioning SWClG. After I got the pool clear again with some bleach and fixed the salt problem, I left the cl generator off and waited to see when the Epool would give me the notice. By the time the red light came on it was probably within hours of another algae bloom but still soon enough that immediate action prevented any problems.
Summary: I think it works well enough for the price as a backup alarm to prevent those ooops moments but should certainly not be relied on for daily checking or dosing measurements.
If anything changes, I'll update.