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App Aims: Read—Record—Analyze—Save (Green!)

Reviewer’s Comments
Curious about your home’s electricity utilization? MeterRead by zerogate will help you observe, record and scrutinize your energy consumption to help you save some green (money) and reduce your carbon impact.

Take your iPhone or iPod touch out to your electrical meter and record the settings on the dial. You’ll need to return later (from 20 minutes to 24 hours) and record a second set of readings. The app will then estimate your 30-day consumption. You can continue to track the settings to see how simple things such as adjusting the heat and air conditioning thermostat, adding insulation or replacing weather stripping or shutting down computers overnight will affect your overall usage. You’ll be very surprised at the results.

The interface isn’t quite as intuitive as it could be and the learning curve is kind of steep. The in-app help doesn’t go beyond simply adding labels to the buttons, which is helpful but incorporating a simple stepped-out list of instructions on how to use the app would go a long way in improving the user’s experience.

The Good Points:

• Excellent customer support/developer is very responsive
• Accurate formula
• Cost-saving and environmentally conscious

Needs:

• Improved in-app help—current help consists of adding labels to the icons
• Graph reports to track data—better quick visual assessment
• Scale back the amount of GREEN color—a bit overwhelming
• Ability to add historical data collected before owning the app

Overall MeterRead is very useful and well worth the time and effort to figure out the navigation and how to input the information. Check out our other Green apps, music and movie download reviews as well as our other iPhone App reviews to help you get the most out of your iPhone and reduce your environmental impact on the world around you.