Advantages and disadvantages of different handheld tuners

[Bluezone]

I've been looking through gear heads offerings and I don't have a clue of what the difference is between the three handheld tuners.
SCT X4
Livewire TS+
SCT BDX.
Can anyone enlighten me as to what the advantages and disadvantages are of each. I probably want something with memory to hold original and optional tunes.
Thanks cheers Bluezone

 

[ridered74]

Never used the BDX but as far as the the x4 and livewire go....the x4 takes almost twice as long to load a tune as the livewire. The livewire has a much newer looking display and allows you view more pid's at one time.

Where the x4 is better in my opinion is when you plug it into the odb port it is almost instantly on and available to cycle thru menus. The livewire is probably 30-40 second wait while it boots up before you can make any choices. The touchscreen on it also sucks (at least for my fingers), I much prefer the hard buttons of the x4.

For loading tunes, livewire is what I use. If I'm getting a log it is almost always done with the x4.

 

[FiveLeeter918]

As far as SCT goes, the X4 is the pretty bare bones unit. Basic color display, no bells and whistles, but gets the job done.

The BDX is essentially the Bully Dog version of the X4, acquired by Derive when they purchased Bully Dog about 5 years ago and rebranded under the SCT letterhead. It offers the same features as the X4, but in a sleeker "nokia brick phone" size and also offers Cloud functionality, making it easier to interface by allowing your tuner to push tunes to the cloud, and allowing you to email datalogs to yourself through the cloud, limiting the amount of time you actually need a computer for tuning. It's only available for SHOs model year 2013 and newer.

The Livewire TS+ is more of a dedicated monitor, it has a touchscreen interface that is much more pleasant to look at, offers track apps and performance monitors, and has a more refined RTM display.

All SCT handhelds can hold between 10 and 20 custom tune files depending on which model you choose, so no issue there holding the original and alternative tunes.

The newest offering to hit the Ecoboost community is the HPTuners RTD. It's just a dongle, so there is no standalone interface and it requires a laptop or Windows based OS tablet to load tunes and datalog, but I've really been enjoying the change of pace utilizing HPTuners for tuning, and the software is much more stable than SCT, especially on 2010-2012 models.

 

[Bluezone]

Never used the BDX but as far as the the x4 and livewire go....the x4 takes almost twice as long to load a tune as the livewire. The livewire has a much newer looking display and allows you view more pid's at one time.

Where the x4 is better in my opinion is when you plug it into the odb port it is almost instantly on and available to cycle thru menus. The livewire is probably 30-40 second wait while it boots up before you can make any choices. The touchscreen on it also sucks (at least for my fingers), I much prefer the hard buttons of the x4.

For loading tunes, livewire is what I use. If I'm getting a log it is almost always done with the x4.

Thanks for your input on your personal experience with these tuners. Much appreciate it.

As far as SCT goes, the X4 is the pretty bare bones unit. Basic color display, no bells and whistles, but gets the job done.

The BDX is essentially the Bully Dog version of the X4, acquired by Derive when they purchased Bully Dog about 5 years ago and rebranded under the SCT letterhead. It offers the same features as the X4, but in a sleeker "nokia brick phone" size and also offers Cloud functionality, making it easier to interface by allowing your tuner to push tunes to the cloud, and allowing you to email datalogs to yourself through the cloud, limiting the amount of time you actually need a computer for tuning. It's only available for SHOs model year 2013 and newer.

The Livewire TS+ is more of a dedicated monitor, it has a touchscreen interface that is much more pleasant to look at, offers track apps and performance monitors, and has a more refined RTM display.

All SCT handhelds can hold between 10 and 20 custom tune files depending on which model you choose, so no issue there holding the original and alternative tunes.

The newest offering to hit the Ecoboost community is the HPTuners RTD. It's just a dongle, so there is no standalone interface and it requires a laptop or Windows based OS tablet to load tunes and datalog, but I've really been enjoying the change of pace utilizing HPTuners for tuning, and the software is much more stable than SCT, especially on 2010-2012 models.

Thanks Lee. Always helpful as usual. Both you gave me a lot of information on choosing what I want to use for a handheld tuner. Unfortunately it seems gearhead doesn't deliver to Canada. There's no delivery options available. I've dropped them an email to find out if the anyway to work around this. Otherwise I'm still looking for a tune.

Cheers guys

 

[FiveLeeter918]

Thanks for your input on your personal experience with these tuners. Much appreciate it.



Thanks Lee. Always helpful as usual. Both you gave me a lot of information on choosing what I want to use for a handheld tuner. Unfortunately it seems gearhead doesn't deliver to Canada. There's no delivery options available. I've dropped them an email to find out if the anyway to work around this. Otherwise I'm still looking for a tune.

Cheers guys

We ship to Canada daily, just saying I have X4s and HPTuners RTDs in stock, and can have the BDX or Livewire TS+ in hand within a day usually to ship everything together. We charge a flat rate $75 fee to ship to Canada.