Review on 🔧 Enhanced KONNWEI KW850 OBD2 Scanner - Professional Auto Code Reader for OBD II Cars After 1996 - Diagnostic Tool to Check Engine Light and Perform Scans (Original) by Cory Spence

I decided to buy a KW850 to solve a fuel economy problem on my 2007 Saturn Aura because my car had no stored codes . A simple code reader would be useless for this purpose. After using this scanner for a few days, I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, I don't regret the purchase - it gets the job done to an extent. This is a great $70 scanner that will help you troubleshoot problems without the Check Engine lights coming on or storing any codes. But unfortunately, the scanner is not that easy to use and has several software bugs that make troubleshooting very difficult. It's not that the data doesn't exist, it's just that it's difficult to interpret and almost impossible to export. For example the O2 sensor data is spread across 2 screens and not grouped - and to get them side by side you need to select the data before the scan and then when exiting - the setting is not saved - so next time you want to run this out - you have to select the data again. This also applies to fuel trims and other items. This doesn't seem like such a big deal, but it's actually annoying when you're in a hurry, work in a store, and can't waste time re-selecting things over and over again. It works for people like me - amateurs with some knowledge but not professionals. Then it is difficult to display four numbers of O2 data at the same time while driving. It would be much better to see this on a graph, or even better to save the data and view it on a PC. The scanner draws graphics to some extent, but there are problems. It's easy to look at the downstream sensors chart as their state changes slowly, but the upstream sensors change state so quickly - the chart would need to be enlarged and the zoom function isn't built in! It would be great to be able to increase it, but that feature doesn't exist at all. This is a terrible mistake. What is the purpose of a fairly powerful oscilloscope function without a "zoom" function? You can save the data and output it to a PC, but there are problems with that too. Numbers as Word file! I haven't figured out what to do with these lines yet, but there must be a better way to do it. Another issue is data resolution. For example, if you only plot 4 lines of data once the O2 sensors are in place, you will get many readings and the overall reading will be smooth. But if you want to record all items, then the scanner is slow and goes through all the screens one by one and the data is truncated because it seems like it is reading and writing an item in a few seconds. My machine has 9 article screens, so it's unbearably slow. This sampling rate is not very good. To speed it up and get more metrics – you just need to select a few items and then you run into trouble exporting the data and converting it to something more readable like an Excel spreadsheet. It is very difficult to transfer these numbers from Word to Excel. I'm still trying to figure all this out. It's really a headache to go through all these little troubles. In general, I recommend this scanner to everyone, but at the same time it is not a professional tool. It has all the functionality you need to read generic OBD2 codes, but manufacturer-specific troubleshooting is only partially available (this depends on the vehicle and its support, so it's not really your fault). Physically it is a very powerful instrument. Very good. The screen quality is impeccable. It took someone a while to do all this. So that's a very big plus. If they had fewer graphics issues, that would be really cool. But what annoyed me the most is that all downloads are somehow packaged in RAR - and this caused me to spend a lot of time unpacking things - that shouldn't be packaged in the first place. The KW850 manual is terrible - I wouldn't even call it a manual to be honest. This could be called a quick start guide, but not even a manual. It sucks. It's so bad - I can't even imagine anyone with no prior automotive training working with a device. You must know what to do and what to expect before learning this. Exporting data requires a combination of things - a software RAR file from their website and a button on the scanner. Otherwise it doesn't work. Also, this data import software doesn't seem to work properly on Win7 in a 64-bit environment. I was able to refresh my tool and view some data, but there were many issues and I had to kill the process manually because it wasn't even responding to the X in the corner. I think it works to an extent, but not in the way the manufacturer intended. In general, this scanner can be purchased. For €70 I can't imagine anything better. On the other hand, it didn't deserve 5 stars due to the shortcomings of the software. I give 3 stars only with one minus. It would be a 4-star tool - with a zoom function and a perfectly working export function. But for 5 stars they should have given us a PC application that allows us to display all this data in an easily recognizable form, and not just some word strings. I hope they fix the problems and since an update is available I'm not worried. But I wish I had everything now. UPDATE 1: Added a few more screenshots to the images. Another problem is that the data downloaded to the PC has no time stamp! They are in TXT format and pasting them into Excel is really a hassle. The data looks like this: **************** ************* REAL DATA ************* ** ********************* VIN: 1G8ZS57N57F122600 PROTOCOL: ISO15765-4 CAN(11bit) LANGUAGE: English Absolute Throttle Position 19.6% Oxygen Sensor Output Voltage (B1- S1) 0.090 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B1-S2) 0.710 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B2-S1) 0.245 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B2-S2) 0.720 V Absolute throttle valve position 19.2 % Lambda sensor output voltage (B1-S1 ) 0.110 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B1-S2) 0.710 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B2-S1) 0.100 V Lambda sensor output voltage (B2-S2) 0.735 V