hello and welcome my name is Frederick Dunn and today I'm going to review a product and I have
to tell you legally that it was given to me in exchange for my evaluation of it but I still
want you to watch all the way through because I'm going to talk about something that's important to
beekeepers refractometers this is a new one that came out it's by a company called FJ Dynamics and
this is their quality control inspection card that they send here but it also shows where it comes
from this thing is made in China no doubt these are all the particles and pieces that come with
it pipettes you have your USBC charger everything else they say it's a pocket refractometer which is
true fits right in your pocket it's about three and three eighths inches long and it's only 7 8
inches in width and you need an app that's right you're gonna have to use your phone
if you want to use this pocket refractometer in order to determine water percentage of your honey
so they say pocket size temperature compensation which means it sets its temperature so that it
reads correctly zero point correction so you can zero it out with distilled water
and supposedly 30 day standby power if it's fully charged now before I do this review
today I charged it overnight USBC just use your standard phone charger if you have one
we have to go to the App Store here and I started to type it out die fluid is the name
of the app and so when I type that in look there it is shows up it's always a good sign
if it shows up it says it's good for everyone so all ages so I'm going to click install here
and then of course it's going to download 12.32 megabytes and verified by play protect that's
always a good sign too so let's open it here we go die fluid look it was the same logo that's on
the packaging that it came in that's a good sign too turn on the device because I want to cover how
to pair it with your phone because without your phone you're not going to read water percentages
because all this thing does is read bricks for example that doesn't help me if I'm testing
honey I want to know what the water percentage is straight up that's all I care about really
so I'm going to show you how well it works and I'm going to make comparisons to two other
refractometers that I use including those that are used by professionals so you don't
want to allow them to determine the position of nearby devices yeah I do while I'm using it only
and then here it is look up at the top there DFT tdg and so on it already shows 92 battery power
interesting because they charged it all night long now we're going to zero it out zeroing no liquid
that's right so I'm gonna have to add a liquid what do you think we should add distilled water of
course and I'm using one of the pipettes that came with it for that purpose still in water look at it
by the way the water is at the same temperature as the device and the other devices that we're
going to evaluate are also the same temperature now let's zero it out oh it says it's zeroing
and you're gonna find out I'm not super excited about the app and the app is
just as important as the unit itself because it all has to work together
so the unit's on it says 0.00 percent breaks and so this thing can be used such as a lot of
other things but the only thing I care about is honey water percentage look at the bottom here
lower left it says 20.3 Celsius you can get into it and change that to Fahrenheit which
I'm going to do in a minute and then we hit this little green button there to get it going
I also went to the device instructions on their website guess what that page doesn't work
and you go to the official website they want to sell you all kinds of other stuff now that green
light comes on when you see that you know that it is refracting light so light either passes through
that's a normal incident angle or it refracts which means it angles through the light at an
other than normal incident angle or it reflects transmits refracts reflects and you click on
the honey here because that's what we want to know about percentage of water content on honey
now here's the thing it shows up as honey on your phone it does not show up as honey on the sensor
itself which would be super helpful if it did that there is something else I want you to notice I'm
putting the honey on here we're going to talk about where that honey came from pretty soon
but look at my phone it says connecting device so this was a frequent problem with it
it continually disconnects from the refractometer that is a minor nuisance but also I'm going to
answer questions about accuracy here today which we're going to want to know so in a way we hit
that and you see that little green light comes on so it's sensing it and watch it's going to read
out brick so 79.90 percent that means nothing to me when I want to know the water content
so they also tell you to scan the code and see that little code that's there on the sticker
which came on the box that's not the code to scan you need to actually flip over the pocket
refractometer and there's another code on the back of that that's the one you scan and then
you can link your app and your phone to the actual device so look it's linked up there top left and
the battery look it's already down to 81 percent charge and we've only been using this for about
15 minutes so that's interesting it says that we would have a lot of time on the battery in standby
mode so I don't know what that means but anyway we zeroed it out so we're a zero percent water
content it's rated for honey if you look at the app on the phone there on the right and now we're
going to put some honey on it and we're going to test it out we're going to find out where we stand
we want to cover the lens make sure that no light gets around the honey and then we're going to do
the test now if you push the button on the FJ Dynamics sensor itself it does activate
independently But there again look what it does it shows me the brakes I don't care about that that
doesn't help me so in order to know the water percentage I have to click the Little Green Dot
on the screen of my phone and then when you do that look it's measuring what's it measuring
it's measuring honey oh it's 22.87 percent water content if that's true that honey is guaranteed
to ferment so that's not good and look where the honey came from Castle hives Lordstown Ohio
and look at bomb whatever that is b-a-u-m-e at 40.39 I'm going to compare this by the way let's
compare this reading with a misco refractometer now for me this is the best refractometer I could
find anywhere I've used it for years this is what state inspectors use food inspectors and
everyone else this one tests one thing and one thing only and that's honey water percentage
so we're gonna do it we're going to test it right here also it has that little cab that covers the
dish there because it sets a constant temperature to make sure that the reading is true we're going
to put the exact same honey which again is at the same temperature as all the instruments
and that's from Castle hives thank you Brian and we're going to find out is this honey really in
Jeopardy of spoiling so here we go to do 17.4 percent that's excellent that is going to be a
nice long shelf life that honey will not ferment so we got a problem here look at the difference
17.5 on the left 22.87 percent on this unit so right now it is not looking good for FJ
Dynamics pocket decimeter we calibrated it with distilled water and I'm going to test
another type of refractometer now this is probably one of the cheapest ones you can
get I'm going to put links to all of these by the way down in the video description
even though FJ Dynamics gave me their unit they just gave me a link to their website so you can go
to that and check their stuff out but I'm going to link all the others here so you can do comparisons
this is your cheapest refractometer and it's going to give you a good accurate reading by the way
we already know that that expensive misco unit read out at 17.5 percent water
let's make a comparison here now we want to put the honey over that entire lens
and remember it's refracted light so it comes at other than 90 degree angle and you can see that
this already has a bevel on it and this requires no batteries or anything daylight that's all you
need we just have to make sure that the honey completely covers that blue area and that there
are no air bubbles trapped in there look at that it's good to go so now we're going to look through
it how am I going to do that well I need special camera gear because I want to get you in there
so that you can see it and look at it that's about 17.6 percent water so if you look where
the blue engages with that light band there that's a percent of water so that is really good so that
means that this very inexpensive refractometer is at 17.6 percent and the misco very expensive one
is at 17.5 percent they're on par with each other they're good to go so we have three refractometers
here side by side now it might not be fair to the FJ Dynamics unit to give it just a one shot
you know one chance we should probably take it through again look at the top of the app
there where it says connecting device this thing loses connection with a refractometer frequently
so I have to reconnect so I can hit the little search button there on the top right and that
means it searches for the unit and it tells you to make sure that the unit's on so you can
do it but another thing I want you to notice look at the temperature 32 degrees Fahrenheit
what's going on there so it went from it bounces all over from the
60s to the 70s and now down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit which is very interesting to me
and I'm still trying to connect it to the vice guess what you have to do when it gets stuck like
this and won't connect you have to turn it off it says I'm not connected to the device and I confirm
that that's right I'm going to hit that confirm button and say that's true we're not connected
so I had to get out of the app get out of the app this is what the app looks like I'm going to make
sure that FJ Dynamics refractometer is on click on their little app and it says connecting device
and there it is it showed up yay I'm back in it but look it says bricks there see on my phone Brix
so now we have to click on that and we're going to have to go to the website after we zero it out
and test it for honey so whenever we zero that it says you're in green light comes on that lets you
know that it's actually doing stuff your phone is talking to your refractometer that's helpful and
zero so good we're zeroed out now let's go to the website look there honey that's what I want and
now it shifted it to Honey notice it doesn't say honey on the actual pocket refractometer itself
so that's a little bit annoying let's get more of that Castle High bunny on there and see if we're
still at that dangerously high water content according to the FJ Dynamics refractometer
now if I click that it reads on its own again what's it going to do bricks 80.3 percent
now let's go over here to the app itself and you have to click the little button down at the bottom
of your screen it looks like the green button on the actual refractometer and then it goes
into measurement mode and you can see that it's communicating because the green light comes on
and now we're at 18.36 percent what a jump so it actually dropped us from a 22 down to 18.36
so I don't think that's very exciting I don't know what else to tell you look
at the temperature too now it's reading 68.7 degrees Fahrenheit
and we're still connected though that's new and look 77 percent battery left
so this temperature parameter jumping all over the place and now I want to save the data right
so I'm going to click save data it says I don't have any data to save so once again
the app somebody else might be better at it it says not measured yet even though it gave me the
water percentage even though it communicated to the unit itself even though it's still connected
to the unit itself so now we're zeroing it out again says there's no liquid which is true and
I'm going to calibrate it again so I'm going to put water and then I'm going to put honey on it
so here we go this is the honey phase again let's see how accurate it is dude
and we'll see that little green light come on which will show that's registering oh it's
measuring green light and we're at 18.12 so with all parameters the same temperature is the same
the unit is the same the honey is the same the calibration method is the same we have spanned 22
percent water content all the way down to 18 and change so it's kind of all over the chart I think
between these three I'm going to have to tell you that if you've got the money and you want a
very accurate system you're actually looking for the misco that blue one on the left if you want a
very accurate system that's manual that doesn't require batteries and just needs user skills
then you're going to want the manual refractometer look we're at 32 degrees Fahrenheit now
and we're back to Bricks which means that laws connection with my refractometer again
and I have to reconnect and then I have to pick honey and then I want to get the water percentage
overall this Rascal is a little finicky also that battery life goes down pretty darn fast
so in less than an hour it was down to 76 percent of its battery charge and it was charged all night
so it's a pocket unit it's convenient it's about a hundred and fifty nine dollars if
you want this pocket unit and you will have to use your phone it's not a standalone thing so I
hope you found this review helpful I want to thank the company for sending it to me
and I see lots of room for improvement here thanks a lot have a great weekend