Aiper IrriSense 2 Smart Irrigation System Review: Clever Yet Uneven

To use Area Mode, you must first define the boundaries of the area. This is done in the app through the same process that I encountered on some competing hardware devices. You turn on mapping mode, and the sprinkler turns on. Then, using a simple remote-control system, you dial the water pressure to the appropriate level, aiming it at the edge of your yard, but not at the fence; Once the water is where you want it, you drop a pin to mark the boundary of the watered area. You then turn the nozzle a few degrees over the sprinkler and repeat, setting the flow strength to cover the desired area. Repeat over and over until you’ve reached 360 degrees and dropped pins to visually represent your entire yard. The company says the maximum supported area is a whopping 4,800 square feet, with a spray reach of 39 feet.

In the app you can see a map of the area being created in real time. The process is fairly intuitive except for the last few points, where Aiper’s system makes it difficult to complete a 360-degree circuit. If you look at the full map in the screenshot below, you’ll see a small piece of the Yard that Aiper can’t close if anyone tries.

Watering runs can be started on demand or on a schedule, and you interestingly define not the amount of time to run but a “water consumption limit”, which you measure in inches of water applied to the soil. Although it’s almost impossible to measure how accurate this is, qualitatively, those estimates seemed about right in my testing.

In Area Mode, the Irisense 2 distributes water by spraying a jet in a single direction, turning it clockwise through 360 degrees until it goes around the map you set, before turning back and doing it again in a counterclockwise direction, repeating this cycle until the desired irrigation depth is reached.

While the Irisense 2’s spray system is officially described as a gentle “mist,” it’s actually more like a jet, especially when it has to reach far-flung parts of the yard near the terminus of its range. This results in much more water being delivered to the edges of the yard than the central portion of the mapped area, but this is a common problem I’ve seen with rotary sprinklers like this one. With this in mind, the IrriSense 2 does not blast at full speed throughout its entire operation. Instead, repeated rotations reduce the pressure bit by bit, until the final rotation produces little more than a stream of water a few inches from the unit. (Note that canceling the race early means only the outermost parts of the field will get water.)

Photograph: Chris Null