I bought the Hand Held (ATC) pH meter from Valley Vintner. I find it useful, it’s a big improvement over pH papers, and the price is great. I’ve discovered two drawbacks, however.

The instruction manual is very sparse; there is no discussion at all of how to store the pH meter, for example.

Also the “two point calibration” is not all it’s cracked up to be. There is only one calibration screw that you can turn. The instructions tell you to first use a pH 7 buffer solution, and turn the screw until the meter reads properly. Then you’re supposed to use a pH 4 buffer and turn the same screw again. This means that the first adjustment is meaningless, and you are really doing a one-point calibration at the last buffer solution that you use. What I’ve been doing is calibrate to a buffer closest to the pH I expect to read. I then test in the second buffer and note how far off it is so that I know how much of an error to expect for pH values far away from the calibration point.

My experience is that there is an error of about 0.25 at pH values close to 4 when I calibrate to pH 7. If you need higher accuracy than this, you should buy a more expensive meter. Otherwise, you can save some money and buy this one.

I hope this helps. Let me know what you buy and how it works out.

Erroll

T