# Microclimate EVO: Product Review



## LFBP-NEIL

Good news and bad news.. Good news is the single most revoloutionary (or should that be Evolutionary) thermostat has hit the reptile market in the shape of the Microclimate evo digital thermostat. bad news is you will want one and you will want to replace your existing thermostats.

So whats the big deal, well for starters its touch screen driven. A full colour touch screen displays all the vital information such as temperature, power output, set points. Tap the temperature on the screen and you instantly bring up a 24 hour graph showing the temperature from the past 24 hours all mapped neatly on a chart, you can instantly see how your thermostat has been performing.

Its also handy If a bulb blows so you can see exactly how long your temps have been out of range for.. assuming you haven’t been in the house because if you had been then the inbuilt alarm would have notified you to a temperature deviation.

The alarm is a bit special on the Microclimate evo.. its not just a deviation alarm… let me explain, on some thermostats you set your temperature and the alarm activates if the actual temperature inside the vivarium deviates from the set temperature. Typically you will specify how many degrees it can deviate by before the alarm activates… which is great until your thermostat that is running a bulb at 30.c throughout the day, drops to 18.c at night and you have to listen to the alarm beeping until the vivarium holding 30.c finally drops to 18.c.

The evo is different, you can set a maximum and minimum alarm temperature, say your setting up for a bearded dragon you could set your maximum alarm to go off if the vivarium goes over 40.c and if it drops below 14.c. that way it can switch between day and night temps without any annoying false alarms. Another nice feature that has been added is that if your viv is overheating at a temperature above the high alarm setting the temperature display will turn red, if its below the low alarm setting the temperature display will turn blue making it easy to see from across a room and without the need to even use an audible alarm..oh yeah i forgot to say you can switch the alarm beep off..

So what else can it do, well theres two channels (yellow and blue) they can handle 600w each, yellow can be a dimming, pulse or on/off thermostat with constant temp, day night temp or multi point temp.. with the last option you can program 4 different temperature points, handy if you want to smooth your temp changes out so for example you can have a morning, day, evening and night temperature or just configure it however you wish.

the blue channel is the auxillary channel, this can be used as an on/off thermostat, a lighting timer or even a mister timer. It has simple on off timings or periodic timings which say for example you have plugged a mister into it and you want it to spray for 20 seconds every five minutes you can do that, or if you just want it to switch the UV lights on in the morning and off at night it can do that.

Yellow and blue sounds a bit dull for channel names (although they do correspond to colour bands on the plug sockets) so you can rename them on the display, I opted for the imaginative names of Heater and Light but you can call them whatever you like, you can even change the name of the thermostat itself on the display.

As you are imagining its probably hard to set up right? Need a pc? cables? CD to install, updates to download? No, No, No, No and No.. using this thermostat is as simple as it is to use a mobile phone.. you press what you want to change i.e press the yellow channel display to get into its features, press the cog icon to change the settings, press the house logo to get back to the main screen. You can get this set up and running out of the box within 5 minutes, setting up has been made intuitive and easy, there are instructions included (nice clear glossy ones) read them to explore the thermostats full capabilities but if all you want is your lights to come on in the morning and go off at night and set your basking lamp to day and night dimming you will be up and running in no time at all.

the Microclimate Evo thermostat comprises the main display unit which is connected to a main box of electronics by a good length of strong cable. Another sign of good design.. the cable into the display is side mounted, which means you can use the thermostat on a vivarium without having to drape wires over the top or try and tuck them underneath the viv, you can simply feed the wire around the side of the vivarium. Plus you can invert the screen display meaning you can place the display on the left or the right and still hide the cable out of sight. The main box can be tucked behind the vivarium or sat in a cabinet underneath, this is slightly bigger than a standard microclimate thermostat and has the probe wire, the two socket cables, the main power in and the cable to the display all coming out of it. Plug, probe and socket cables are all long enough to enable the thermostat to be set up neatly without having to perform any equipment balancing acts just to get things plugged in.

There have been previous compatability issues with digital thermostats and T5 lighting technology where the two devices cause some sort of interference that somehow overrides the thermostat function jamming the heating on. i have tried my best to replicate this on the Microclimate Evo using the same lighting controller that reacted badly with other thermostats and am pleased to say I have been unable to duplicate the problem, I ran a basking bulb and T5 lamp both from the Evo, placed the lamp controller in close proximity ( i sat them on top of each other) to the evo box and display and even wrapped all the thermostat cables and T5 cables together in a wire spaghetti and the thermostat didnt so much as blink, so i am pretty confident there are no compatibility issues.

Speaking of blinking.. the dimming function on the Evo is very smooth, you dont notice the dimming as it dims the power rather than reduce it it in jerky steps, theres no unexplained flashes or blinks from the heatlamp everything just runs smoothly.You do get a very very slight buzzing from the main box when the unit is dimming, this is the interference suppression inside the box but it is hardly noticeable and to be honest i only picked up on it because i put my ear to the box to see how loud it was having read other complaints about prime thermostats buzzing.

The Microclimate Evo looks and feels of a quality build, completely designed and built in the UK and backed with a 5 year guarantee! something no other digital thermostat on the market can boast.


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## LFBP-NEIL

Heres some Evo Videos you may find usefull.. 

http://youtu.be/1S2eUFp32fM

http://youtu.be/N6HxND7RCwY

http://youtu.be/iIpZDa15T2M


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## wezza309

can you give a comparison between the prime and evo i know the evo has a nice display and no need for the pc conected other than those two things what other changes 
( I have two primes and think they are really good )


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## nathanreptile

yh I still think the prime is a better choice for me due to having 3 outputs over 2, does look a nice little unit tho


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## LFBP-NEIL

The main difference is the Evo is a single enclosure thermostat.. it only has one temperature probe so although you can use one channel as an on/off, dimmer or pulse stat and the other channel as an on/off thermostat, both channels are activated by the one sensor/temp reading. So for a single enclosure running a heat lamp and heat mat its perfect. 

The primes are 2 or 3 channels, with both prime models having 2 sensor probes so both prime models can run two seperate enclosures. The prime also features ramp times for temperature, pc compatibility etc,


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## legallyblonde

Hi Neil

I noticed you also reviewed the digital habistat ones previously and I wondered how you thought they compared? I am trying to decide between the Habistat temp DN + timer and the evo. Do you think one is more accurate or anything?

Thanks


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## LFBP-NEIL

I think they are both extremely accurate being digitally controlled, I think the fairest way to compare is to simply list the features that each model has..


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## legallyblonde

Thanks for that Neil  think I'm now def sold on the evo


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## Gazb123

I have always used the Habistat Digital range of stats but reading up on the Evo I thought I would break with tradition and try an EVO. So I just bought the Evo and I feel a little cheated to be honest and I have not even set it up yet. Its probably my own fault but having two channels sounds great to me. One can be set up as a dimmer and the other is on/off thermostat. Great. What is NOT made clear is that this only has one sensor probe so its great for running two heat sources in one viv but thats about it. You cant have the dimming channel controlling the output of a bulb in one viv and the other controlling an on/off heater in another. I think the fact that they use a yellow lizard and a blue lizard to show the different channels also compounds this misunderstanding. I bought this as it sounded exactly what I wanted in controlling two different heat sources in two different vivs but it looks like it cannot do this. 

Also if you ARE using this to control 2 different heaters in one viv ( eg a bulb for a hotspot and a tube heater for a ambient) where would you put the probe? If you want to control the hotspot then surely the probe goes in the hotspot area...... then how does that measure the ambient at the far end of the viv......Maybe I just don't understand it !


Like I said, its probably me, but I like to think I am a reasonably intelligent person and I believed it could control different heaters in different Vivs. For £89.99 I would have been better off with the Habistat digital dimmer.


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## Gazb123

.....and another thing......... the probe lead is not very long !!!


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## Mickyboa

Have you looked at the istat pulse plus ?


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## oscarsi001

Gazb123 said:


> .....and another thing......... the probe lead is not very long !!!


Having decided to invest in the EVO for my new Lanzos, in my humble opinion it's not the probe cable length that's the problem, it's the mains lead that is ridiculously short, especially when you have a stack of vivs and a mains lead that's only 90cms long .............:whistling2:


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## Cerberus1973

how long is the probe lead ?


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## DTexotics

Can this stat control the basking light for the heat also with the UVB light ?


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## Giddzz

Hey all I have a microclimate evo lite operating a 75w heat lamp when I set the temp to 40dc the status reading goes to about 37.7dc goes red then cuts the lamp out any reason as to why? I have a young BD and need his temp at 40-41dc :/

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## Arckivio

I have literally joined just to add to this old thread. DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE THINGS!!! I bought 2 less than 2 years ago & apart from the terrible touch screen on both of mine, yes I know it's not the same as a phone touch screen but they chose to use this type, they are both on their way out. On one, the LED screen started to dim 6 months ago & is now dead. The second started to dim 3 months ago so has a couple of months left til the screen dies too. Until I can get A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BRAND of thermostat I have to rely on a black screen in the hope it actually is still using my settings & to think these are now 90 odd quid!!!!!! Dreadful cheap garbage


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