#1 – AMBIENT WEATHER WS-2902C OSPREY

Selected as the Best Home Weather Station, the Ambient WS-2902C Osprey is a popular option with its 10 weather sensors.  It also includes built-in wifi and happens to be the most affordable option all at the same time…  Read Full Review

#2 – ACURITE ATLAS WEATHER STATION

AcuRite’s latest remote monitoring weather station definitely makes the “best home weather station” list.  It’s easy to use, easy to install, full of features, and data can be viewed from your phone…  Read Full Review

#3 – DAVIS INSTRUMENTS VANTAGE VUE 6250

The Vantage Vue is not only easy to install, but it’s backed by the Davis Instruments name.  With this, its capabilities, instrument accuracy, and update frequency lead the pack…  Read Full Review

Things to Consider When Buying Weather Stations

There are so many different home weather stations to choose from today.  While some of them focus on accuracy and other performance metrics, we tended to focus more on the consumer for our list.  We feel the importance of a weather station to a “regular Joe” is its ease of installation and operation as well as being convenient in daily use.  You don’t want it to require a meteorology degree to operate the darn thing!

Connectivity Options

To be considered the best home weather station, it must be very “connected” just like everything else in our lives.  Most of the popular models are these days anyway.  Nobody leaves their home without a smart phone anymore so you might want to see the data from there, right?  Some of these weather stations will even integrate with your smart home, including Ambient’s WS-2902C Osprey at the top of our list.  You’ll have to decide what connections are important to you, but here’s a quick list of things weather stations can connect to these days.  There are so many, you won’t use them all.  Note, all of our individual weather station reviews provide information on particular connectivity options of each model in detail.

• Computer or PC – Connecting to a PC helps you log data and follow trends
• Internet – Connecting to the world wide web allows for many options.  There are both private and public networks to join where weather data can be posted.  Most of the major weather station brands offer their own private networks.  The most popular public network is the Weather Underground.  Uploading your data to the web can be fun and give you an opportunity to network with others who have passion around the same things you do.
• Smartphone Apps – Many of the big brands, including those on this list, offer apps for both Android and iPhone.
• Smart Homes – Connect to things like Amazon’s Alexa and IFTTT.  Through IFTTT, can connect to web services such as Gmail, Facebook, and Instagram.

Weather Displays

Weather Displays come in many shapes and sizes.  For the purposes of determining what’s important in the best home weather station, please keep in mind three things:  Aesthetics, ease of use, and functionality.

Of the brands we’ve reviewed here at WXobservation.com, AcuRite seems to be the most innovative when it comes to weather displays.  Many of their displays are bright, colorful, and utilize high definition technology.

For ease of use, do you want to mount the display on a wall or set it on a desk?  Many home weather station displays can do both, including all three weather stations on our list above.  In addition, they all have a little different interface, but none of them are clunky or hard to navigate.

Of course, functionality is also important.  What can you do with the data?  Can you make graphs?  Can you see trends?  Can you set alarms or notifications?  Davis Instruments typically leads the way when it comes to functional weather displays, but the other brands are catching up!

Reliability

Although reliability is an important factor in determining the best home weather station, it is also somewhat subjective.  Rather than just give you our opinion which home weather stations are the most reliable, we’ve done extensive research and shared our findings with you on our review pages.  The weather stations on this list are all reliable sources of local weather data and have past the test of user reviews, each polls significantly well with customer feedback.  This is where the importance of weather station reviews comes into play.  This goes for both our reviews and customer reviews through Amazon, or any online retailer.  You should always do your due diligence when buying any product by reading through the customer reviews prior to purchasing.

Affordability

Last, but not least, affordability is the final criteria of the best home weather station.  Of course, price isn’t everything.  But it’s also true that often times you get what you pay for.  However, you want to feel like your money is well-spent and you aren’t buying junk.  It’s prudent to consider value when buying something that will cost you over $100 bucks.  Money doesn’t grow on trees!  So let’s specifically discuss the home weather stations we’ve chosen.

Ambient Weather WS-2902C Osprey

Each of the home weather stations on the list above supplies the consumer tremendous value for their money.  At the top of the list, the WS-2902C Osprey from Ambient Weather offers the most bang for your buck.  As mentioned above, it not only has a 10-in-1 sensor suite, but it also has wifi capabilities, integrates well with smart home devices, and is one of the most affordable options of any we’ve chosen to review on our site.  Other brands make you pay extra for added weather sensors.  With this weather station, they’re included.  Other models require additional items to connect to the internet, or at least extra wires, not the WS-2902C that comes wifi-enabled.  In addition, the WS-2902C uses solar energy as its main power source.  You can’t beat all that! 

AcuRite Atlas

Similarly, the Atlas remote monitoring weather station is priced right for the options it includes, specifically built-in wireless internet connectivity and AcuRite’s new Atlas weather sensor.  Some of the features that come standard on this model need to be purchased separately on the Davis 6250.  Out of the many weather stations AcuRite manufactures, this is our favorite!  However, keep in mind when looking at the AcuRite models to consider where you’ll be mounting the weather sensor.  Since they are battery-operated versus the solar power of the Davis Vantage Vue, you’ll be changing batteries.  AcuRite’s Remote Battery Pack should help overcome this drawback.

Davis Instruments Vantage Vue 6250

Next, the Vantage Vue is everything consumers have come to expect from Davis Instruments.  The 6250 Vue is made in the USA and built to be rugged, tough, and reliable.  It’s also full of insanely capable technology!  Despite of all this, it’s reasonably priced for you what you get and is a good selection for home use when durability, accuracy, and speed are top considerations.  It’s also run primarily on solar-power.  Unfortunately, the consumer pays extra for all these benefits, which is why it’s not at the top of this list.  But, it’s hard to be the performance specifications on the Vantage Vue in an all-in-one package.

Summary

Not everyone is in the same boat.  Ultimately, you have to decide what’s important to you when buying your next weather station.  Hopefully we’ve supplied enough food for thought so you can make an informed decision and feel good about what you’re getting.  In our opinion, due to the value proposition we discussed above, the Ambient WS-2902C Osprey is the best weather station for home use that is currently available.  There isn’t any other model with so many features and such a high percentage of positive feedback at this price-point.

Other weather watchers have used AcuRite weather stations their whole lives and love them.  For those guys, the Atlas is the best choice!  As mentioned above, it comes standard with features other manufactures make you pay for.

But I should say, you can’t go wrong with any of the home weather stations on this list.  Each has its strengths.  In fact, if you can afford the additional cost of the Vantage Vue from Davis, it actually has better performance specs like accuracy and data update frequency.  Unfortunately, if you want to put the data on the web, you’ll need some additional hardware that costs extra.

No matter which model you choose, we wish you good luck.

DAVIS

VANTAGE VUE