Smart Home · Smart Hose Timers / Garden Watering
Do I need a Wi-Fi hub or can the timer connect directly?
Reviewer consensus
Most of the best-reviewed smart hose timers (Rachio, Orbit B-hyve Gen 2, LinkTap G2S) use a separate Wi-Fi hub that talks to the valve over a longer-range radio. This is by design: a battery-powered valve sitting on a metal spigot is a hostile environment for Wi-Fi. A few timers (Meross, some Orbit B-hyve XD variants) connect directly to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi without a hub, which is simpler but range and battery life can suffer if the spigot is far from your router.