Have you ever stood in the garden center debating whether your planting bed was in part sun or part shade? Could those terms be any more vague? Now you'll know for certain! Place the SunCalc in the ground on a sunny day and twelve hours later you will have an accurate LED reading of the light level in that area. Plants can be expensive, save yourself time and money by choosing wisely. Runs on a single watch battery that will last 4-5 years.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: time, not intensity - basically useless
Comment: I have experimented with the suncalc for several days now. Based on the fact that it rates both the hosta bed and the flowering part/full sun perennial bed as "part shade" I have determined that the device measures hours of sunlight only. There is a huge difference between 6 hours of low intensity morning and evening sun and 6 straight hours of midday sun. If I put hostas in the perennial bed they would cook. If I put the perennials in the hosta bed they would do exactly nothing. So empirically the light conditions cannot be equivalent. If the suncalc took into account the angle of light and the intensity, I believe it would read part sun in the perennial bed.
I have complex sunlight microclimates and I was hoping to use the suncalc to tell me if I had a true full sun location and also to help map out sun conditions before and after the deciduous trees leaf out to identify good places for early bulbs. I can't see any way it will help me. I bought it on eBay since the price was much better than on Amazon. Normally eBay returns are either impossible or a huge hassle, but at 20+ dollars I'm going to give it a try.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy to use
Comment: This sunlight calculator is simple to use. I don't know yet how accurate it is. We will have to wait and see how many of my plants die.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Necessity for new gardeners
Comment: SuncCalc is a necessity for new gardeners or a gardener planning a new bed. It does the work a gardener used to have to spend hours doing; going into the space every hour with a pen and paper and writing down whether the area was sunny or shady and then adding up the hours to figure out whether you had part sun, shade, etc. Helps you to know what to buy at the nursery . Very easy to use, push a button, leave it for 24 hours and read the results.
Love it and will buy it for all my gardening buddies.
